by Robin Jarvis
“No, I didn’t mean that. It’s something else. Like they were role playing or pretending to be different. I couldn’t work it out.”
“Now you mention it,” Mr Roy agreed, “there was one in my class who was acting funny and talking odd.”
At that moment the door opened and Mrs Hughes, the school secretary, popped her head round.
“Martin,” she said brightly. “Can you come to reception? There’s someone to see you. They’ve been waiting for almost half an hour.”
Mr Baxter groaned, resealed his sandwiches and followed her down the corridor.
“I told her today isn’t exactly the best time,” Mrs Hughes explained apologetically. “But she refused to leave and I suppose, after all, she is a former pupil.”
“Is she?” Martin asked in surprise. He didn’t have long to discover just who it was. They pushed through a pair of fire doors and entered the school reception area. There, sitting on one of the low comfy chairs that weren’t comfy at all, was Shiela Doyle.
The young woman looked agitated and more dishevelled than ever. When she saw Martin, she leaped up and took a step towards him. Then she halted and looked hesitantly around. There was a hunted, jumpy air about her.
Mrs Hughes smiled benignly and disappeared discreetly into her office, but kept the sliding glass partition partly open and busied herself with some papers.
“Hello, Shiela,” Martin began, wondering what in the world she was doing here while noting the dark circles around her eyes and jumping to the wrong conclusions. “Twice in two days. What can I do for you?”
Shiela rubbed her arm nervously, which made him think her situation was even worse. He hoped she wasn’t going to ask him for money.
“I shouldn’t be here,” she said quickly. “If the Ismus finds out…”
“The what?”
“The man I was with at the boot fair,” she hissed at him. “He used to be called Jezza, but now we have to call him the Ismus.”
“And what’s one of those?”
“Sort of High Priest, I think.”
“Shiela, what have you got yourself into?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I really don’t understand what’s happening. It’s just… I don’t even know how to explain.”
“You seem scared stiff. Get away from him if he’s that bad and making you do stuff you don’t want to do.”
“If only it was that easy,” she answered with a pathetic laugh. “If only I could escape it. I’m only here today because he’s gone to Ipswich with his bodyguards and I won’t be missed.”
“His what?”
“He has bodyguards. They go everywhere with him now. If they knew I was here, talking to you, to anyone…”
Martin gestured to the chairs and they both sat down. “Has he threatened you?” he asked in a whisper that even Mrs Hughes wouldn’t be able to overhear.
The young woman stared back at him with her ravaged eyes. “He’s a threat to everyone,” she replied starkly. “Mr Baxter, have you ever heard of Austerly Fellows?”
“I don’t think… was he a student here?”
Shiela shook her head. “He wrote that book your partner’s kid was given yesterday. He… he hasn’t read any of it yet, has he?”
“That old book?” Martin asked in surprise. “Shiela. Why are you here? I think you should go to the police if you’re…”
“The book!” she insisted. “Has the kid read any of it?”
Martin was taken aback by the urgency in her voice. “No,” he answered. “I don’t think so. We watched DVDs last night.”
Shiela let out a huge breath of relief. “Then you’ve got to make sure he doesn’t,” she warned. “Don’t let him even look at it. Burn it, bin it, do whatever you have to, but don’t let him near the bloody thing!”
“Shiela, you’re scaring me now. Have you taken something? I think you need to see a doctor.”
“I’m not mad!” she shouted. “I know what this sounds like – I know it sounds crazy, but it isn’t. Oh, God – it isn’t. Find out about Austerly Fellows! Then see if I’m mad. We went to the house. That’s where it started and that’s my fault. I thought if I could… it doesn’t matter what I thought, not now. Whatever you do, get rid of that book. Please! That’s why I’ve come here.”
Her face had turned white and she was shaking with emotion. Martin didn’t know what to do. His eyes flicked to the partition and saw that Mrs Hughes was gawping at them. Then Shiela was on her feet again.
“I’ve got to go,” she said with a shiver. “I shouldn’t be here. Just remember what I said, yeah?”
“Don’t go yet,” Martin asked her. “We can go to the Head’s office and have a cup of tea or coffee. I’m sure we could even stretch to some biscuits. Let’s talk this through.”
The young woman’s eyes moved off him. There was nothing he could do to help. He had always been her favourite teacher and she had tried her best to warn him of the danger. But he wouldn’t listen or believe what she had to say and she didn’t blame him for that. She looked over the artworks and announcements that decorated the reception area and inhaled the building’s familiar smells one last time. A faint smile pulled at the corners of her mouth.
“I was happy here,” she said softly. Then she opened the main door and left.
Martin Baxter watched her walk through the school gates, then glanced at Mrs Hughes.
“Just like Amy Winehouse,” she lamented with a sorry shake of the head.
The maths teacher wondered exactly what she meant by that. Speaking to Shiela, he had decided that she wasn’t on drugs at that precise moment, but surely her paranoia and nonsensical rambling were the result of them.
“All that talent wasted,” the secretary clarified. “Shiela Doyle was such a bright, clever girl. So sad to see what’s happened to her.”
“Yes, very,” Martin agreed.
“What was that about a book?”
Martin shrugged. “No idea,” he said, but the girl’s forceful pleas had unnerved him. He resolved to check out Paul’s boot fair acquisition later that evening and see for himself.
As Shiela made her way from the school and headed back towards the Port of Felixstowe Road and INK-XS, she was not aware that someone had been waiting for her. A person in black slipped out from behind one of the news vans and kept their steady eyes upon her receding figure.
Queenie closed the fan in her hands and tapped it against her palm.
“What have you been up to, my Lady Labella?” she murmured.
Chapter 13
The Lockpick holds the keys to every door in the White Castle and carries them on nine hoops that rattle and clink about his belt. That is why he is also known as Jangler. Neither room nor strongbox can deny him. He is so skilled in the art of making and opening locks that the Ismus made him Warder of the Crown Jewels. He sleeps within that very vault, upon a comfortless wooden mattress, surrounded by the strewn shells of eggs and walnuts so that he may hear any who try to steal in during the night.
HANKINSON AND WEBB was an old-established family firm of solicitors in Ipswich, dating back to 1911. Situated off the Old Foundry Road, it was respectable and reliable and traditional. They didn’t chase injury claims for careless people who slipped on wet floors at work or used the wrong ladders. They didn’t even deal in divorces, merely wills and probate and conveyancing. There were no more Webbs in the firm, the last one had retired back in 1954, but plain old Hankinsons sounded like something you blew your nose on and Hankinson and Sons was just silly.
That Monday morning, Arnold Hankinson was with a new client, a Mr Rackley, a first-time buyer, and Arnold was talking him through the process. It was something he had done over a thousand times in his dry career. In his early forties, he had become part of the furniture there and was almost as thin as the hatstand by the door of his office, which wore his hat and coat with more panache than he ever could.
The drone of his funereal voice was causing the client’s eyelids to
droop and his attention to wander. The office was a library of files and overstuffed drawers. Stacks of buff envelopes and papers were on every surface. A primitive computer with a bulky monitor dominated the large desk and Mr Rackley wondered if he should have taken his business somewhere a little more up to date.
When a commotion began outside the door and the secretary’s unhappy voice was raised in alarm, Mr Rackley was almost pleased and he sat upright in his chair, alert once more.
“No, you can’t go in there!” Miss Linton called out. “Mr Hankinson’s in a meeting.”
“He’ll want to see me,” another voice told her as a shadow fell across the door’s frosted glass panel.
“I’ll call the police if you don’t leave this building right now.”
“Not a good idea,” growled a third voice.
“Trust me, darling – your boss really will want to see me.”
The handle turned and the door flew open.
Mr Hankinson had already picked up the receiver of his phone and had dialled two 9s when the intruder came leaping across the room and tore the cord from the wall socket.
“Don’t be rude, Arnold!” the stranger told him. “Don’t give my boys an excuse to get noisy with you.”
Through the thick lenses of his spectacles, Mr Hankinson stared incredulously at the man. He had never seen him before in his life. He was a peculiar sight, in his leather jacket with tails and grimy, clever features. Then, craning his head around him, the thin solicitor saw the two large companions looming over his secretary. Their faces were blackened. What was going on?
“We don’t keep any money here,” he said quickly. “Just some petty cash and not much of that.”
The Ismus paced in front of the desk.
“I don’t want your money,” he said. “Or yours either!” he told Mr Rackley.
“I’ve just got a mortgage,” the client burbled. “I haven’t got any.”
“What do you want then?” asked Mr Hankinson nervously.
The Ismus pushed a sheaf of papers off the desk and perched on the corner. “I want the Lockpick,” he demanded. “I want to see Jangler and I don’t have all day.”
“You’ve got the wrong place,” Mr Hankinson said timidly. “No, I haven’t, Arnold,” the Ismus replied, crouching forward across the desk and bringing his face close to the thin solicitor’s. “Now bring him to me.”
“I don’t know who you mean! There’s no one here called that.”
“Get me the Lockpick!” the Ismus demanded, lashing out and toppling a stack of files. The papers within spilled over the floor.
“You can’t do this!” Mr Hankinson protested.
“Get me the Lockpick!”
Mr Rackley shrank back in his chair, but the lunatic was not interested in him.
“You’ll be on camera!” Arnold shouted. “There’s CCTV pointed right at the entrance here.”
“I hope they got my good side.”
“The police will catch you!”
The Ismus swung his long legs off the desk and strode to the shelves where he began to fling the files across the room.
“Stop it!” the solicitor pleaded. “That’s decades of work!”
The Ismus paused.
“You think this crap is important?” he said, clutching a yellow form.
“It is,” Arnold insisted.
The Ismus chuckled and wafted the form in front of Arnold’s nose. “No, it isn’t,” he whispered. “Your precious papers can curl up and fade for all I, or the world, care.”
As he spoke, Mr Hankinson saw the yellow paper discolour in his fingers. Dark spots of mould freckled their way forward until the whole form was furred and black. He removed his spectacles and shook his head in horror.
The Ismus sneered at him and dropped the blackened form on to the slew of papers that now covered the carpet. Within moments, the mould had spread. It flowed thickly over every sheet, every envelope, until every scrap was caked in stinking mildew. Then it began to creep up the walls, engulfing the patterned wallpaper, invading the framed certificates and qualifications, eating the family photographs. Three generations of Hankinsons were greedily obliterated.
The solicitor and Mr Rackley could not believe what they were seeing. The stench of damp was unbearable, but they could not drag their eyes away from the rapacious, consuming mould as it marched across the ceiling, which bulged and sagged as the plaster crumbled. It was impossible and terrifying.
“That’s enough,” a new voice said sternly.
Everyone turned to the doorway where a short, balding man in his sixties was standing.
“Father,” Mr Hankinson exclaimed. “Get out quick!”
“Don’t be an ass, Arnold,” the old man said, closing the door behind him and regarding the Ismus with a steady, unflappable gaze. A patch of mould dropped from the ceiling on to the shoulder of his suit and he brushed it off casually.
“What’s all this racket?” he asked. “I could hear you clear down the hall.”
His son’s eyes widened and he gestured frenetically at the Ismus and the room that was now completely covered in thick black mildew.
“Is this your doing?” Hankinson Senior asked the stranger.
A crafty smile spread over the Ismus’s face. “Jangler,” he greeted. Old Mr Hankinson held his eye for an instant, but nothing betrayed his thoughts. Then he turned to Mr Rackley.
“I’m so sorry your appointment has been hijacked in this manner,” he apologised in a forced, jovial tone. “Some of our clients are… a trifle boisterous and unorthodox.”
“Father!” Arnold spluttered.
“This gentleman is an illusionist from a contemporary and rather radical theatrical troupe,” the old man explained. “He’s a hypnotist. The two fellows outside are postmodern clowns. They get very good reviews at the Edinburgh Festival, I believe.”
The Ismus let out a loud laugh at this spontaneous invention. He approved wholeheartedly. Then the uncanny, voracious mould started to shrivel and fade from the ceiling. It dwindled down the walls and retreated over the floor. The white and pale colours of the papers were revealed, unblemished, once more and the mould seemed to be sucked under the Ismus’s shoes until there was nothing left of it, except a faint must of decay that hung on the air.
“You should be on telly, mate!” Mr Rackley marvelled, clapping his hands. “You’re miles better than Derren Brown! That was so real! Wow!”
Arnold Hankinson pushed back in his chair and tried to understand what was going on. His father was making conciliatory noises to the client and hoping the interruption wasn’t too unpleasant.
“There will, of course, be no charge for our services,” he was telling him.
“But, Father!” Arnold broke in. “The police…”
“Oh, do get a hold of yourself,” the old man shushed him, “and stop making a drama out of a little artistic temperament. Now if I can take this illusionist gentleman into my office, we’ll leave you in peace. This place is an appalling mess, Arnold. What’s the matter with you, boy?”
He nodded once more to Mr Rackley then led the Ismus from the room. In a daze, Arnold Hankinson stared at the closed door for several minutes. Then he cast his eyes around the scattered papers and files. “What just happened?” he murmured.
Mr Rackley burst out laughing. “And I thought solicitors were boring and stuffy!” he said. “You’re madder than Harry Hill!”
In the outer office, Maynard Rumbold Hankinson was assuring Miss Linton there was no need to panic. He knew these people very well and their theatrics weren’t to be taken seriously.
The secretary looked doubtfully at the two large men with soot on their faces and wasn’t so certain.
“They’re not your usual type of clients,” she said suspiciously. “I’m sure I’ve never seen them before.”
“They weren’t in make-up before,” old Mr Hankinson told her. “Now do calm down and carry on with what you were doing.”
He beckoned to the
Ismus and his bodyguards. “This way, if you please.”
At the end of a dimly-lit hallway, he ushered them into his own office. It was slightly larger than the one his son inhabited, but was lined with identical-looking files and towers of paper. He closed the door firmly and walked over to lean against his desk. Every trace of that phoney joviality had vanished from his face. He smoothed his neat little moustache with his fingers while he considered the three bizarre strangers.
“Now then,” he began testily.
“Jangler.” The Ismus addressed him as if he was meeting an old friend. “’Tis I!”
“Don’t give me that,” the peppery old man snapped.
“I am the Ismus. If you are the Lockpick, you know why I am here.”
Old Mr Hankinson’s face might as well have been made from granite. “If you truly are who you claim to be,” he said, “prove it.”
“That’s the solicitor speaking,” the Ismus tutted. “You have heard me use my rightful name which no other would even know. You have also seen what we can do – and yet you demand a third testament. Doing things in triplicate is such a monotonous obsession.”
“Show me,” the old man demanded firmly.
The Ismus snapped his fingers and held out his hand. Tesco Charlie took a copy of Dancing Jacks from the large pocket of his black cargo trousers and gave it to him.
“There,” the Ismus declared. “This is the moment you and your family have waited for, for almost eighty years.”
“It’s a book certainly,” Mr Hankinson replied, hardly glancing at it. “That isn’t the proof I’m asking for. Anyone could have broken into that house and removed the crates. Anyone could have… encountered Mr Fellows.”
The Ismus laughed again. “Hardly ‘anyone’!” he cried. “What a stout and dogged guardian you are. How well you deserve the title of Lockpick, faithful custodian of the Dawn Prince’s keys and secret treasures. You are as solid and steadfast as your grandfather before you.”
“We have waited a long time,” the old man replied tersely. “That is why I won’t surrender what was entrusted to my family without the necessary verification and my patience with you is wearing thin. So, if you refuse to show me, I really will call the police. You not only barge in here and cause a disturbance, you have also, by your own admission, broken into a listed property, which our firm holds in trust, and removed from there…”
