Glass Town

by Steven Savile

  When Julie turned the corner and disappeared behind the creaking sign of the old pub, he eased out into the middle of the road, executing a careful three-point turn, and headed back toward The Hunter’s Horns.

  It was a few minutes after closing time when he pulled up outside the pub but that didn’t matter. Lockwood was expecting him. He didn’t go in through the main door. He went around to the side and knocked twice, sharply on a boarded-up door. The walls on either side of it was a patchwork of whitewashed bricks and clever graffiti. The door opened a moment later. It was a young man—Lockwood’s grandson—who answered. “Ah, our bent bastard; nice of you to grace us with your presence.”

  He stepped aside to let Taff inside.

  “Don’t call me that.”

  “Why not? That’s what you are, isn’t it? A bent bastard.”

  “I don’t like it.”

  “I don’t care what you like, but if it makes you feel better I could just call you our cunt? How’d you like that? I mean, you open yourself wide for our money, so that’s what you are, isn’t it?”

  “Go fuck yourself, kid.”

  Lockwood smiled. “Ah, so you’ve still got a bit of self-respect hidden in there somewhere have you? Good. It’s no fun if you’re completely broken. Come in, Granddad’s expecting you.”

  Taff followed Lockwood Junior down a dank regency-wallpapered corridor to a heavy oak door that led through to the snug where Gideon Lockwood waited. The carpet was sticky under his feet.

  Lockwood stopped just short of the threshold. “Just remember, one day not too far away now, all this will be mine. You will be mine. Pleasant thought, isn’t it?”

  Before Taff could answer, he opened the door.

  The old crook maneuvered his wheelchair around to face Taff as he entered the smoke-filled room. There were three untouched drinks on the table. Gideon Lockwood nodded toward one of them. Taff took his seat. There were cigarette burns in the upholstery. Like everything else inside The Hunter’s Horns, it had seen better days.

  “You wanted to see me?”

  Gideon Lockwood reached out with a trembling hand for the brandy glass on the table. He hooked his fingers around the stem and raised it to his lips, savoring the rich flavor of the drink before he deigned to answer his pet policeman. “I did. I do. And no doubt I will again.”

  “Can’t live without me, eh?” Taff Carter said with a good deal more bluster than he felt. This place gave him the creeps. It was like something out of a ’60s gangster movie. He half-expected to see the ghosts of Ronnie and Reggie Kray leaning against the bar, looking on approvingly as one of their kindred spirits put the frighteners on the copper.

  “I believe you responded to a call to a burglary on the Rothery tonight?”

  Taff nodded. “Nothing exciting.”

  “Au contraire,” the old villain said. “It was quite exciting, actually. The thief was looking for something I would dearly love to lay my hands on, but she failed me. The object of her search is rather precious to my family. An heirloom, I suppose you’d say. It was taken from us many years ago, and we’ve just recently learned that the thief was none other than the much-loved and late of this parish, Boone Raines. That’s where you come in, Mr. Carter. I want you to recover it for me.”

  “We’ve known each other a long time, Mr. Lockwood. You know you can trust me,” the Welshman said, already rubbing his palms in anticipation of the silver that was about to cross them.

  “I know I can, Huw. My grandson doubts your dedication to our cause, but I don’t. I know exactly what your loyalty costs in pounds, shillings, and pence.” His smile was wry. “And that’s what counts after all, isn’t it?”

  Taff didn’t contradict him. “So what is it I’m looking for?”

  “As I said, an heirloom. A piece of Damiola’s glass.”

  “Is that some kind of ornament? A necklace?”

  “Not really. It’s more like a custom-ground lens.”

  “A lens? You mean like a contact lens or for a camera?”

  Lockwood shook his head. “In principle, yes, but again, neither are terms I would use to describe it.”

  “Okay so how would you describe Damnwhatsit’s lens then? I need to know what I’m looking for.”

  “Damiola’s glass,” Lockwood repeated the name slowly, as though he were talking to a child. “It’s about the size of a cricket ball.” He demonstrated, fighting the shakes to put thumbs and forefingers together to make a rough circle. “But shaped like a disc rather than spherical, hence referring to it as a lens. You’ll find it in a brass compact case.”

  “Compact? Like a makeup case?” Lockwood nodded. “Okay, and what’s so special about it? It can’t just be sentimental value. No offense, but in all the years I’ve known you, Mr. Lockwood, you’ve never once come across as the sentimental sort.”

  “People can change, Huw,” Gideon Lockwood half-smiled. “But its relative value is none of your concern. All you need to know is that it is precious to me. Bring it back to me and you shall be rewarded handsomely.”

  “So, not to put too fine a point on it, but where am I going to find this precious compact?”

  “On a dead man,” Lockwood said. “Assuming he took it with him to the grave. Otherwise, it could be anywhere. That is why I am paying you.” The old man reached into his jacket for his wallet, and began to count out five hundred pounds in crisp fifties. “This should cover any incidentals you might incur.”

  “What if I said I didn’t want your money?” Taff said, earning a snort of derision from Lockwood’s grandson as he reached down for his own glass. He hadn’t taken a seat at the table. It was about intimidation. By standing over them he was exerting power, showing his dominance. Taff had to look up to him whether he wanted to or not.

  “I’d say I didn’t believe you, but for the sake of argument, what do you want, if not my money? Let’s open negotiations, Officer Carter.”

  “The woman.”

  “What woman would that be?”

  “The woman in white. The one you sent to find the looking glass.”

  “You want me to give you the woman? How’s that supposed to work?”

  “Just one night. That’s all I want. One night with a woman like that.” Taff was shaking; his tremors were more pronounced than Lockwood’s even without the old man’s affliction. He struggled to master them.

  “Just say I could arrange it,” Gideon Lockwood said, waiting for the hope to register in the policeman’s eyes. The eyes could never lie, he’d found, not when the temptation dangled in front of them was fashioned from desire. “What makes you think I would?”

  “I’ve been good to you, Mr. Lockwood. Never seen you wrong. Looked out for your interests. Kept my colleagues off your back.”

  “And you figure I owe you, is that it?”

  He didn’t want to say that. Not out loud, but yes, that was exactly what Taff figured.

  “Ever heard the saying: Be careful what you wish for?”

  “One night,” Taff said, “that’s all I want. Just one night with someone like that. Dear God, could you imagine?”

  A slow smile spread across the young Lockwood’s face. He knocked back the shot of whiskey in his own glass and slammed the tumbler back down onto the ring-stained table right in front of Taff Carter. “I could, but I don’t think you can,” he said.

  “Why? Because I’m overweight? A fat fuck like me would never get to have a woman like that go down on me? Do me a fucking favor. All I’ve got is my fucking imagination,” Taff said bitterly. “Just once I’d like to have the real deal, so if it’s all the same to you, fuck your money, I want the woman. And not just some whore you send around to my place. Her. I want her. I want her to fuck me like I’m Brad fucking Pitt and George Clooney rolled into one. And I want her to pretend she likes it. If you can get her to do that, I’ll get the glass for you and I’ll get you anything else you want.”

  “Well, then, I think we have ourselves a deal, Huw,” the young Lockwood
said, gripping his shoulder. His fingers were uncomfortable as they pressed deeper than they should, digging into the muscle. “I’ll send her around to your place tonight. You’re right. You deserve it. And it’s the very least I can do for you.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Oh, don’t thank me, you bent bastard. You’re going to get exactly what you asked for because I am a man of my word. Words are important. But in terms of our little arrangement, it’s purely business, remember that when you’re lying back and trying to think of England. I hope she’s worth it.”

  “She will be.” Taff turned to go, then stopped and said, “One more thing.”

  “Don’t push your luck, Taff.”

  “His name … this dead man, who am I looking for?”

  “Cadmus Damiola.”

  “What kind of name is that?”

  “An old one. It used to mean something around here.”

  9

  WHISKEY DREAMS

  When was a key not a key? It wasn’t so much a metaphorical question as it was a metaphysical one, like the tree falling with no one to hear it. A key with nothing to open has no purpose. Josh felt it rattle against Boone’s tobacco tin in his pocket. Through the narrow window he caught a glimpse of that eerie blue-white flickering light as it swelled. He hesitated, caught in indecision, frozen between throwing the door open and running, or shrinking back into the shadows of the shed and pulling the old blanket up over his head and hoping the wraith bride just passed him by.

  That hesitation took the choice out of his hands.

  Josh saw her through the cobwebbed glass, heart-stoppingly beautiful, and utterly terrifying as she ghosted across the foxtails, dandelion clocks, and seed potatoes toward the shed. He scuffed back a step away from the glass, his foot fetching up against a discarded flower box and making it scrape across the wooden floor with what—given as he was trying to be church-mouse silent—sounded to him like enough of a racket to raise the dead. Josh fervently prayed she hadn’t heard it. Mind racing, he ducked away from the window. How had she followed him here? How had she known this was where he would run to when he hadn’t known himself? Or, more pertinently, perhaps, more bitterly, certainly: How had he been stupid enough to allow himself to be cornered here with nowhere to run?

  The air felt peculiar. It was as if it was heavy with energy. Charged.

  He risked a careful step back toward Boone’s makeshift chair, transferring his weight from one foot to another very, very carefully so the old boards beneath them didn’t protest, and then another, putting him out of direct line of sight through the window. He could hear her out there, moving through the allotment. He could hear the rustle of her long white dress through the high foxtails and the whisper of the long grasses in her wake. And he could hear something else, too, even if he couldn’t understand what: a burst of static, like a radio that had fallen off-station, a cackle of white noise as it tried to retune, and somewhere inside that, the ghosts of voices that couldn’t quite come through.

  The shed was filled with an array of makeshift weapons if worst came to worst, but he wasn’t sure he could fight the woman. Could a rusty old sickle cut her? He didn’t want to ever find out the answer. That didn’t stop him from taking down the sickle. It didn’t have a particularly good edge on it, but given that the last thing he wanted to do was swing it the lack of cutting edge really wasn’t a deal breaker.

  The diffuse blue light filled the window, casting shadows across the workbench and tools inside the shed as it created a stark new geography for the place that consisted of black shadows and sharp angles. He caught a glimpse of her blond bob through the glass as she crossed the window.

  The static crackled again.

  It was at the door.

  The eerie light crept beneath it, seeming to edge closer and closer to his feet, reaching out for him.

  Josh tried to shuffle back another step, but there was nowhere to go.

  The handle rattled.

  Josh could half-hear the voices trapped inside it as another burst of static filled the night.

  His grip tightened on the sickle’s wooden grip.

  The handle turned.

  The door groaned open an inch.

  Two.

  The wraith bride’s weird luminescence spilled into the shed.

  The light touched every corner of the interior.

  There was nowhere to hide as she opened the door.

  Myrna Shepherd stood in the doorway, the folds of her white dress coiling around her, her chest flushed, rising and falling shallowly, breath coming fast. Her eyes were smoky hollows. She opened her mouth and another burst of white noise and ghost voices crackled out of her. He heard words in there, they were faint, coming from a long way away—another time, another place—and they made no sense to him: “Gimme a whiskey sour…”

  “What do you want from me?”

  “Gimme a whiskey sour…”

  Josh didn’t know what to say to that. “I don’t have any,” Josh said, feeling stupid and terrified at the same time. It was beyond surreal, facing a movie icon in the doorway of his grandfather’s allotment shed, listening to her ask for a drink, and knowing what she really wanted was to shred his soul. His free hand closed around the key in his pocket. All he could think was that he couldn’t let her have it.

  “C’mon baby, you don’t want to disappoint a lady, do you?”

  “I can’t give you what I don’t have,” Josh took his hand out of his pocket and held up both the sickle and the empty hand to show Shepherd he wasn’t holding out on her.

  “You don’t want to disappoint a lady…”

  She crossed the threshold.

  Just a single step.

  And then she stopped, tilting her head as though listening to something—a sound so far away or pitched so high—he couldn’t hear. Her face twitched. Her head straightened. Those smoky eyes of hers bore into him. Her nostrils flared. And then her entire face flickered and for the silence between his hammering heartbeats she wasn’t there.

  And then she was.

  Another burst of static filled with words, an old movie line, he realized hearing the echo of that famous statement of hers: “Loneliness is good for the soul.” And, good to her word, the thing that was Myrna Shepherd backed away from the door, leaving Josh Raines to stand there and stare at the open doorway and wonder what had just happened and how the hell he was still alive.

  He didn’t move for a full five minutes, but the light had long since faded. Whatever she was, she wasn’t coming back. He didn’t know what had stopped her, but whatever the reason it had saved his life, so he wasn’t about to start arguing with it.

  He dropped the sickle on the old workbench and sank down onto Boone’s tea chest seat, exhausted as the flood of adrenaline left his body. He was shaking so hard the key in his pocket rattled against the tobacco tin as though to remind him it was still there.

  When is a key not a key? He riddled himself again; only he did know what it opened, just not where it opened it. It opened the door to Boone’s secret place. He even knew what was inside it—or at least thought he did. It couldn’t be far away; he knew that, too. The old man hadn’t traveled much in his last days. So in point of fact he knew a lot more than he had even a few hours ago. And he wasn’t fumbling in the dark. Boone had left him Isaiah’s confession for a reason, hadn’t he? It had to be a clue, didn’t it?

  But there were no addresses in that old letter, were there?

  10

  WRAITH BRIDE

  Taff Carter felt particularly pleased with himself as he arrived home that night. He’d got one over on those smug bastards. They’d been so sure he’d do anything for the money—and truth be told he probably would have, if he hadn’t had to put up with Lockwood’s brat calling him a bent bastard, like he was somehow better. How could a piece of scum like Lockwood think he ever had the moral high ground? The man was worse than the shit you dragged in on the bottom of your shoe. But that only made his little victory a
ll the sweeter.

  Taff slammed the car door and damn it if he wasn’t whistling as he walked the short distance down the driveway to his front door. If any of the neighbors had heard him mangling that happy tune, they’d have assumed he was drunk or stoned. Taff might have been many things, but he was not a whistler. He glanced back over his shoulder as he put the key in the lock. The habit was ingrained. Trust no one. You never knew who was out there or who might have followed you home. Better safe than sorry and a dozen other little pat truisms. He’d given the speech a hundred times at Victim Support meetings. It was all about taking responsibility for your own safety.

  He was alone.

  He opened the door and went inside.

  The house was quiet. It was always quiet. That’s what came of living alone. It would have been nice to be one of those guys who came home from work to the smells of cooking in the kitchen and the bustle of kids running up and down the stairs, toys everywhere, the family dog jumping up and down excitedly, but that life wasn’t for him. He’d accepted the truth of that years ago. He’d never been a ladies’ man and even when he had managed to find someone who liked him enough to say yes he’d never learned the secret of making it last.

  He turned the lights on and locked the door behind him.

  Home sweet home.

  He had his routines: through to the lounge to put some music on, Miles Davis tonight, Kind of Blue accompanying him through to the kitchen to brew a pot of coffee, before getting out of the uniform and kicking back for an hour just unwinding. Davis’s melancholic sax was perfect for his mood. There was something inherently lonely about it. It was the music of solitude. It was also the soundtrack of his life.

  The fragrance of freshly ground coffee beans filled the kitchen.

  Taff kicked off his shoes and sank down into the couch.

  He wasn’t a bent bastard, whatever they said. He wasn’t even a bad cop. He’d started out as an idealist, just like Julie Gennaro, full of spit and vinegar. He’d gone toe-to-toe with some of the biggest villains in the city and won—or at least hadn’t lost, which was an important distinction in this day and age. And then that bastard Lockwood had found his Achilles’ heel, and just like that he was in his pocket and no matter how much he wriggled and struggled and kicked back he just couldn’t get out now. He was too far gone. So it stopped being about getting out and became about taking the money, keeping his head down, not getting caught. He wasn’t proud of what he’d become, but Taff Carter was a survivor, he’d live with the shame.