The tall Fenton ignored her and turned to his brother. ‘What d’ye reckon? The kid, the MILF or the poof?’
Reggie stepped forward. ‘Gentlemen, there is no need for violence. I’m sure Ox will sort out his business with you promptly. We shall inform him of your displeasure.’
‘Oh, la-di-da,’ said the short one. ‘This one, Terry,’ he said, with a jut of his head towards Reggie. ‘Let me do this one. Understand, like, it’s not cos he’s a poof – I just always really hated Rupert the fucking Bear.’
He leaned forward and patted Reggie’s waistcoated paunch. ‘Our nan had a settee that looked just like you. I never liked it – or her.’
Reggie sighed. ‘Gentlemen, a couple of points of note. Firstly, you have made the common, if lazy, mistake of confusing decorum and a sense of individuality with homosexuality – even in this more enlightened age, a tediously frequent occurrence. As it happens, I am rampantly heterosexual. And secondly …’
It was fast. So fast that there didn’t seem to be a moment where it was happening. It went from being an impossibility to being something that had already happened. One second the Fentons were snarling at them, and the next, each of them had one of Reggie’s hands at their throat, hands that were holding knives, pressed up against their skin.
‘Either of youse muppets threaten me or my friends again and it’ll get tasty. Are we clear?’
Reggie’s voice had dropped an octave and fallen into an entirely different accent. To be polite, Hannah would have called it Liverpudlian, but most would simply label it Scouse.
The big Fenton went to speak, but stopped when the blade was pressed slightly harder against his throat.
‘Don’t speak, la’, just nod – real slow, like.’
They both nodded.
And just like that, as soon as it had happened, it had unhappened. Reggie withdrew his hands, the knives disappeared back to wherever they had appeared from, and Reggie’s plummy diction returned.
‘Excellent. Lovely to chat, but we must dash. Ladies, if you please.’
The Fenton brothers stood statue-still as the group hurried up the pavement past them.
‘Whoa,’ said Stella when they were out of earshot. ‘What in the … what?! That was stone-cold badass, Reggie.’
Reggie didn’t look back, but hurried on. ‘Now, now. It was an unfortunate necessity. Let’s not bang on about it. In fact, I’d be very grateful if nobody mentioned it again. You should head home, Stella. I don’t want Grace getting upset.’
He threw them a wave and was off across the road, looking like a flustered librarian on his way to a cello recital.
Stella and Hannah shared a blank look as they watched him go – a portly, middle-aged man who freaked out at the prospect of an editorial meeting but who could have blades at the throats of two thugs in the blink of an eye.
CHAPTER 6
Jimmy woke with a start.
This was a good spot, normally. Under the railway arches in Castlefield. Central, but far enough out of the way that you wouldn’t have some drunken student tripping over you on the way back to his digs. It was dry, unless it really wasn’t – like in the summer when the rain was heavy and the guttering above had flooded – but tonight there was only a light drizzle. If you huddled in the corner between the red-brick walls, it was generally all right, although when the wind changed and blew in at just the right angle, it’d cut right through you.
Was that what’d happened? Jimmy felt cold, but no more than you’d expect for Manchester in March. It was supposed to be bloody spring, but there’d been snow last week. Most of the country had come to a standstill, but Manchester never got that much. Jimmy was from Glasgow and took pride in telling people how they had real cold up there; this was nothing. Sleeping rough up that way was hardcore.
Leaky and Jen used to hang here at night, but then Leaky’d got done for thieving and she’d cleared off. People were always moving on like that – disappearing only to reappear months or even years later, but sometimes never again. Jimmy had liked Jen; she’d had a kind heart. He’d had suspicions that she was one of the Folk, but she’d played dumb when he’d dropped hints. He supposed he couldn’t blame her. Folk who’d run had always done it for good reasons, and they always wanted to stay lost. He knew he did.
He liked Castlefield. It had the feel of the old. There was a sign up for the tourists, telling them it’d been the town from which the whole city had grown, having appeared on the side of the Roman fort of Mamucium and supplying it with ‘necessary services’. Jimmy’s brother had been a squaddie, and he knew exactly what ‘necessary services’ soldiers went looking for. He had once made the mistake of joking that the whole city had grown out of a knocking shop, and Carol Newell had belted him round the earhole something rotten. Weird burst of civic pride from a girl who’d seen her fair share of passenger seats until she’d got sick.
You could still see some of the skeleton of the original fort. There were old bits of wall knocking about, in between the yuppie flats and that. The normals needed plaques to tell ’em it existed, but Jimmy could feel the history. It seeped into the soil. History was a different thing to his kind. It wasn’t to be found in books.
He pulled his sleeping bag tighter around himself and rolled over. He needed to get a bit of kip before the trains started rolling overhead and the ordinary world burst into irritating life around him. What he wouldn’t give for just one solid block of eight hours. He could change a lot of things with a decent night’s sleep.
He sat up when he heard the sound. It wasn’t much, but maybe that was the point. Maybe it was the kind of sound somebody would make when they were trying not to make one. His heart was pounding.
Tanner was going to come looking for him. Jimmy had been hurting and he’d nicked some of his stash. Tanner knew. He and Jimmy had been tight, but he wasn’t the forgiving sort. Jimmy knew he had a beating coming. All of his life, it’d felt as if he had a beating coming – like he’d popped out of his ma down on his luck and had never got back to even. Like all the Folk, he had to pay the cost. You couldn’t avoid it even if you ran. They always found you.
There it was again. The noise. Above him. On the arches. How was it up there? There were no trains at this time of night. Maybe there were workmen checking the line? He’d seen them before.
Still, something down around his nutsack was telling him to run, baby, run.
He slipped out of his sleeping bag as quietly as he could. Most of what he had he was wearing. The rest was in his rucksack beside him. It was as he leaned down slowly to pick it up that he saw them: the eyes. They glowed. Once you’d seen them, the mind could feel out the rest of the creature’s form. It hung upside down from the railings. Only it couldn’t be … It was impossible. There were rules now. He’d never seen one, but there had been bedtime stories – the kind that kept you up at night. The thing … yawned? It yawned. Above those eyes, he could see its white fangs in the dim light as its powerful jaws stretched open. It wanted him to run. It was going to get its wish.
His feet were already moving before the thought had formed.
Jimmy bounced off the wall beneath the arch and found himself in the wide-open area between the bridge and the canal, his feet barely touching the cobbled ground. He heard something land softly behind him and then came the skitter of claws on stone.
Jimmy headed for the footbridge, his heart thumping so hard in his chest that he thought it might explode.
He heard the rush of air a millisecond before it hit. Something big and heavy crashed into his back, knocking him so hard that he couldn’t put out his hands in time and his face met the pavement. His nose shattered and that row of replacement teeth, which the nice dentist lady had done for him after he’d caught a beating last year, smashed messily. He rolled on to his back and spat out the broken dentures. He could taste the blood as it washed down his face from his shattered nose.
Then it was on top of him. The red eyes inches from his. Claws dug into his
shoulders. The jaws were open, drool spilling from them in long ribbons, as the creature panted.
‘No, no. S’not possible. You’re a … You dinnae exist. Not any …’
It leaned forward and licked at the blood on Jimmy’s face.
He whimpered and clenched his eyes shut, wishing this to be a nightmare he could wake up from, even though he knew for certain it was no such thing.
‘What in the—?’
Jimmy opened his eyes at the sound of a voice he recognized. Long John was as Manc as they came. When someone did an impression of a Manc accent, whether they’d met him or not, it was Long John they were doing. He must’ve just wandered around the corner, looking for a place to crash. He stood there, a bottle of something in his hand, looking down at them, his mouth wide in an O of disbelief.
He turned, but his chances were as hopeless as Jimmy’s had been. The creature reached out a long arm and snagged the back of Long John’s coat. The bottle smashed to the ground beside Jimmy’s head, the liquid splashing on to his lips. Vodka. Long John must’ve come into some dosh. The beast wrapped its massive claws around Long John’s throat.
The last thing Jimmy saw was the surprised expression on Long John’s face as he flew through the air and over the canal before hitting the wall on the far side and sliding down it.
Then, mercifully, Jimmy passed out.
Homework Eats Dog
A woman in Norway has claimed that her child’s art homework consumed the family pet. Elana Niddlestrom, 37, says that her son, Eric, drew a particularly unsettling picture of a troll that appeared to him in a dream. It was left alone with their pet terrier, known as Donkey, when the family went to the cinema, only for the dog to have disappeared without trace when they returned. An extensive search produced no sign of Donkey, but Elana noticed that the troll’s facial expression had changed and it was now smiling in ‘a disturbing way’. Mrs Niddlestrom would not give her permission for the picture to be reproduced in the press as she expressed her concern that it may ‘add to its power’.
CHAPTER 7
Grace looked at the clock on the wall and sighed. Eight fifty-nine a.m.
The new girl had seemed quite pleasant, and it would’ve been nice to have another woman around the place. It would’ve been nice to have anyone else around the place, come to that. Oh well, she’d put the ad up again after the meeting.
She looked up to see Ox, whose expression was akin to that of a child waiting for Christmas.
He spoke in a low, excited whisper. ‘She’s not here.’
‘I can see that, Ox.’
‘I had her lasting less than a day in the office pool.’
‘Technically, if she doesn’t turn up, she never started, so …’
Ox’s expression changed to one of outrage. ‘What? No way, man. That is f—’
‘Ox,’ interrupted Grace, whose feelings on foul language were well known.
‘That’s not right,’ finished Ox. ‘I won the bet, fair and square.’
‘It’d be the first time in a while.’
Grace disapproved of gambling, bar the occasional office pool and five pounds every year on the horse in the Grand National with the most God-fearing name. To be fair to Ox, you couldn’t call what he did ‘gambling’ – he had a system, which, as far as Grace could tell, could guarantee a loss with unerring accuracy.
‘Where’s Simon?’ asked Ox, looking to change the subject. ‘He’s not outside.’
‘Isn’t he? Poor child, maybe he finally had enough of standing around in the cold. That boy has a proper education, should be making something of himself. Maybe seeing someone else getting taken on made him realize it was time to give up the ghost.’
Reggie looked up at the mention of ghosts. ‘What?’
‘Nothing, dear.’
Reggie nodded and went back to staring at the floor. They were all more than aware of how much he dreaded these meetings. Grace had made sure to position herself between him and the most direct route to the roof, as she didn’t want a repeat of yesterday. Banecroft may no longer have his gun, but the man had something far worse: an imagination. Reggie looked pale and kept closing his eyes and taking deep breaths, but so far, he hadn’t given any indication that he was considering bolting.
Reggie and Ox sat opposite Grace, with Stella in the corner beside the laptop, playing on her phone while reading a book. Grace had given up trying to figure out how that worked. She returned to watching the clock on the wall as the second hand clicked around towards 9 a.m. The quartet sat in silence. It was the kind of silence you probably encountered right before a parachute jump into enemy territory. Grace made an effort to smile reassuringly in Reggie’s direction, just in case he opened his eyes at any point.
Normally, the editorial meeting happened on a Monday afternoon. But, normally, the editor had not shot himself in the foot immediately beforehand. As the paramedics had taken Banecroft away, the last thing he had hollered was that the editorial meeting would be at 9 a.m. the following day. So here they were – she, Ox, Reggie and Stella – sitting in the bullpen, waiting for the arrival of the bull. And the new girl hadn’t turned up.
The ‘bullpen’ had been called that for longer than Grace could remember, and she’d been there a while now. It was a grand title for an office space that held enough desks for about a dozen people – not that they needed that many. It was only the four of them, plus Banecroft and whoever the next new Tina would be – on this floor, at least. There had been more employees when Grace had started, about a decade ago, but the numbers had been slowly going down. Banecroft’s arrival six months previously had prompted a scramble for the lifeboats. Life under Barry, the previous editor of The Stranger Times, had been like snuggling up beside a fire with a warm cup of cocoa. With Banecroft it was like being in the fire.
The furniture was mismatched and wobbly. The wooden floorboards were so wonky there was now a dip in the centre of the room – which was a worry, given how high up they were. The floor they were on must have been put in when the Church of Old Souls was converted. Not for the first time, Grace looked beneath her feet and wondered what kind of building regulations were in existence at whatever deep and distant point in the past the conversion had happened. The Stranger Times had been here longer than anyone could remember.
The clock ticked over to 9 a.m. and the door linking the bullpen to Banecroft’s office flew open. His office had one door that led into reception via the corridor but a second one opened directly into the bullpen. It meant that at any given time the staff could never be entirely sure where he was. A fact he used to his full advantage.
Reggie flinched as Vincent Banecroft emerged, but thankfully he remained seated. The editor limped in, crutch in his right hand, looking even less in love with life than usual, if such a thing were possible. He was wearing his grey pinstriped suit. As far as Grace was aware, he owned three suits, all of which looked as if they might stand up and walk out of the office of their own accord. He’d be down to two now, the trousers of the black one having been shredded by yesterday’s incident. Sartorial elegance was one of the first casualties of war.
Grace found herself wondering how he’d got back here last night and, come to that, what he’d been wearing when he had done so. Somewhere, a taxi driver had a tale to tell.
Banecroft limped towards them. ‘Where in the hell is the new Tina?’
Grace answered. ‘She hasn’t shown up.’
Banecroft threw himself into the office chair that Grace had left out for him. ‘I knew it. First sniff of the real world and she’s run home to hubby. She’ll be back in his cheating arms as we speak. I have a sixth sense for these things.’
‘Yes,’ said Grace. ‘You are quite the people person.’
Banecroft stopped, a cigarette halfway to his mouth. ‘Are you mocking my finely honed intuition, Grace?’
‘No.’ She had found that the trick with Banecroft was not to push him too far, otherwise he’d take his bad mood out on one of the ot
hers.
‘Right,’ said Banecroft, lighting his cigarette. ‘Due to yesterday’s workplace accident, caused by that one’ – he jabbed his lighter in Reggie’s direction – ‘we’re already behind schedule.’
Reggie looked suitably outraged. ‘How on earth was that debacle my fault?’
‘Because,’ said Banecroft, inhaling half a cigarette in one breath and expelling the smoke from his nostrils, ‘I’d have never touched the damn gun if you’d not been on the roof having yet another melodramatic Monday meltdown.’
‘Most people don’t try to deal with such a situation by threatening to shoot the person involved.’
‘Well,’ said Banecroft, ‘you were too far away to stab. Come to that, I distinctly told somebody after last week’s episode to block off access to the roof.’
Stella raised a hand without looking up from her book. ‘Yeah, that was me. Didn’t do it.’
‘And why not?’
‘Cos we got one set of stairs out of here and I ain’t dying in no fire, you get me?’
‘What are the odds of that happening?’
‘You started a fire yesterday.’
Ox nodded. ‘She’s got a point there.’
‘Does she?’ Banecroft glowered at Ox, who shifted in his chair.
‘How am I in trouble?’ he asked.
‘It’ll come to me in a minute.’
Grace heard a thump outside in the reception area. ‘Oh, for the love of the Lord, I put a sign up saying not to come in.’
‘Did you use diagrams?’ asked Banecroft. ‘I get the definite impression that most of the loons who buy this rag do so mostly for the pretty pictures.’
‘Hello?’
Grace smiled. It was Hannah.
‘So much for your finely honed intuition.’ She raised her voice. ‘In here, darling.’
The Stranger Times Page 6
