Inspector Kirby and Harold Longcoat

by Ian Martyn

  ‘It’s perfume,’ Shirley said. ‘Fragrance of the night by Dior, I’d say. Got some myself, although I don’t wear it much. I’m sure it brings me out in a rash.’

  Geraldo scowled at her.

  ‘What?’

  His eyebrows seemed to take on a life of their own as they fluttered independently. ‘It’s,’ he held up both hands, palms out, ‘the smell of magic.’

  ‘Here?’ Kirby said.

  Shirley lifted her nose towards the ceiling and sniffed. ‘No, definitely Dior.’

  Geraldo went into his matinee crouch and swept an arm around the room. All that was missing was the cloak. The arm paused on the wardrobe. A bit of a cliché, Kirby thought, but the arm started moving again, now pointing out of the door. ‘A little in here but…’ The arm swept out of the room, taking the rest of Geraldo with it.

  ‘I told you he’d be useful,’ Harold said as he and Kirby followed Geraldo.

  ‘We’ll see.’

  Geraldo was at the front door, knees bent and still sniffing. ‘Goblin.’

  Kirby groaned.

  ‘Do they use Dior as well then?’ Shirley asked.

  Kirby glared at her.

  ‘Sorry, sir.’

  Geraldo ignored them both. ‘Yes, I was misled by what I’m guessing is next door’s tomcat.’

  ‘And!’ The arm was raised, finger pointing, over his head. Kirby’s eyes followed, happy to see only a ceiling above him. They followed the arm again back towards the living area. It passed one door and then pointed at a third. ‘Aha!’

  Shirley tried the handle. ‘Locked.’

  Kirby wandered into the kitchen with the others trailing behind him. Thankfully Geraldo had straightened up. It seemed his magic-sniffing had been distracted by tea and digestives, both of which he helped himself to.

  ‘Milk and sugar, anyone?’ Susie asked.

  ‘Just milk, thanks,’ Kirby said, taking the mug from Susie. He was relieved it was what he recognised as tea, not some herbal or scented concoction. He took a sip and smiled at Susie. ‘So Susie, the other doors?’

  ‘The one next to Sarah’s is my room.’

  Shirley poured herself some tea. ‘But you work in here?’

  Susie shrugged. ‘Sarah’s is the larger bedroom and mine has no window. Only fair seeing as it’s her place. So I like to work in here and Sarah doesn’t mind. Says it means there’s always tea on the go.’

  ‘And the others?’ Kirby asked.

  ‘The one next to this is the bathroom.’

  ‘And the one next to your room? The one that’s locked.’

  Susie gave a little shiver. ‘The basement.’

  ‘And you don’t like the basement?’ Harold asked before Kirby could.

  ‘Yuck, no.’

  ‘Why?’

  Susie shifted from one foot to the other and back again. ‘I know it sounds pathetic, but we opened it once and there were,’ she glanced at Shirley, ‘…spiders.’

  Kirby tutted. ‘Not again.’

  ‘Don’t blame you,’ Shirley mumbled through a mouthful of biscuit.

  ‘Also, it was a bit, you know… spooky.’

  ‘Spooky?’ Kirby said, more because he felt he should be the one asking the questions.

  ‘Don’t underestimate spooky,’ Harold said.

  ‘I don’t,’ Kirby said. ‘You have the key though?’

  Susie opened one of the kitchen drawers and rummaged around inside. Having removed a garlic press and a corkscrew, she produced a key. As Kirby reached out, Geraldo grabbed it. He waved his other hand over it and opened both palms towards them to show it had gone.

  ‘Nice,’ Shirley said. ‘Shame the rabbit wasn’t here, we could have had the full show.’

  Kirby raised his eyes to the ceiling before looking at Harold, who grinned.

  ‘Shall we?’ Geraldo said, his arm once again leading the way.

  ‘Does he ever stop?’ Kirby asked Harold as they followed.

  ‘Not that I’ve noticed.’

  ‘I’d still like to see the rabbit,’ Shirley muttered.

  At the door, the hand-waving was repeated for the key to reappear.

  ‘Ta-ra,’ Shirley said.

  The key turned in the lock with a satisfying clunk. There was even a theatrical creak as the door opened, which Kirby thought must have pleased Geraldo. Harold leaned in and found the light switch. A single dim, bare bulb cast gloomy shadows. Inside, Susie had been right, there were cobwebs everywhere. Kirby let Geraldo and Harold go in first.

  Shirley shuddered, then followed Kirby. ‘Come on, Shirley, they’re only spiders,’ she said to herself, hesitating on the top step and holding her arms close to her sides to avoid touching anything.

  Harold stopped on the bottom step which had Kirby bumping into him and Shirley into Kirby. ‘Ah, I should have guessed,’

  ‘What?’ Kirby said.

  ‘Being so close.’

  ‘What!’

  Harold moved across to where Geraldo was crouched next to the far wall.

  ‘A door,’ Susie said, from behind them all. It seemed her curiosity had got the better of her own aversion to spiders.

  Geraldo stood and spun around in one fluid movement. ‘You can see it?’

  ‘Yes, sort of. If I look directly at it, it’s just a wall. But if I kind of look at it sideways, then I can see it. Does that make sense?’

  Geraldo took four rapid steps across the room, then pushed past Kirby and Shirley to get to Susie, who was still on the steps. He leant his face so it was inches from hers. Susie leant back a little but held her ground. Kirby was impressed.

  Geraldo’s eyes flickered over Susie’s face. ‘Hmm…’

  ‘Hmm?’ Shirley asked.

  ‘Hmm,’ Geraldo repeated, then stepped back past Kirby.

  ‘So are you going to bounce off this one, Harold? Kirby said. ‘At least this time you aren’t holding a crossbow, so you can’t shoot anyone.’

  Harold frowned back. Geraldo rotated his head towards Harold and raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Temporary glitch, that’s all.’

  Geraldo went back into a crouch and let his arm take him back to the wall. As he had with Susie, he leant his face inches from it. ‘Seems normal.’

  ‘Not in my world, it doesn’t,’ Kirby muttered.

  Harold put his hand on the wall and now even Kirby could see the door. It was old, solid, with an arch at the top. But there were no visible locks or bolts.

  ‘Well I never,’ Shirley said.

  ‘So how does it open?’ Kirby asked.

  Geraldo waved both arms over his head, catching the single bulb as he did so, which sent their shadows dancing around the room. ‘Magic.’

  Kirby raised a hand to stop the light swaying, one could only take so much theatre. ‘I’m not sure I want to ask this, but can you open it?’

  Geraldo waggled the fingers of his right hand and spread them before extending his arm until they were a few millimetres from the door.

  ‘Was it my imagination,’ Shirley said, ‘or did that door flinch?’

  ‘Shhh,’ Harold said.

  Geraldo moved his hand across the door until he got to where you might expect a handle to be. He took a deep breath and waggled his fingers again. Then his hand shot back as if he’d been stung. ‘That’s a bit nasty.’

  ‘So can you open it?’ Kirby asked again.

  Geraldo scowled at him. ‘I can. Just… just not now.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because it doesn’t want me to. I need to think about it. If I go in heavy-handed as it were I could bring the whole house down.’

  ‘That’s as good a reason as any,’ Kirby said. He wasn’t sure whether to be disappointed or relieved.

  Outside, Kirby and Shirley watched Harold and Geraldo head off in the direction of Harold’s shop. Harold’s coat was flapping in the breeze and Geraldo’s jacket seemed to shimmer.

  Shirley shivered. ‘You know, sir, there are times when I think a career in traffic doe
sn’t seem such a bad idea.’

  ‘I know what you mean, Constable.’

  ‘So what now, sir?’

  ‘I’m not sure, Shirley. At the moment it seems I’m just waiting for things to happen; that I have no control over where this investigation is going.’

  ‘Welcome to the world of a detective Constable, sir.’

  Kirby laughed. ‘Yes, but I’m an inspector and I’m supposed to know what I’m doing.’

  ‘You’ll get there, sir. You always do.’

  Kirby smiled. ‘Thank you, Constable. Tell you what, why don’t you look into that shop, Mystique, see what you can find out? I didn’t exactly get far with the assistant.’

  ‘Sir.’

  twenty-sEVEN

  Kirby watched Shirley get in her car and drive off. He looked back at the door to the girls’ flat, shaking his head as he thought about the last half-hour or so. ‘Actual magic, really?’ he said out loud to see if it might make it more believable. When he’d been in the flat and Geraldo had said it, it was almost as if, ‘Oh yeah, magic’. Now outside and on his own, part of his brain was suggesting that a chat with a psychiatrist might be a good idea. The curtains of the house opposite twitched.

  ‘I’d think twice about keeping an eye on everything if I were you,’ Kirby muttered. ‘You might see things you really wish you hadn’t.’ He took his keys out of his pocket as he walked back to his own car. He hesitated, then put them back in his pocket and walked past. Sometimes walking helped, as if the simple rhythm of putting one foot in front of the other freed the mind.

  It was a lovely summer’s day and even the breeze was warm, having declined to come from its normal easterly direction for a few days, fancying the south for a change. A hazy sun was shining through high cloud, casting a shadow that led him towards Clayton Road. However, he felt anything but bright himself. A few days ago his life had been a bit weird, even for a copper. That was normal weird, though, just people. And yes, people could be damn weird, just look at Medusa Lil. But they were still people. You knew what you were dealing with. Sooner or later people did what, well, what people did. He knew how their minds worked, even the potty ones, especially the potty ones. That’s what coppering was all about, understanding people and how their minds worked. And the fact that he understood all that was what made him a good copper. But this? Magic, goblins, secret doors and God knows what else might be lurking behind those doors. This was Jesmond for heaven’s sake, where chintz was still alive and well.

  He had no idea how this worked. What made these people’s minds tick, what drove them. They didn’t want the latest in flat-screen TV or the thrill of joy-riding in an expensive car. They didn’t want the things they couldn’t afford, or even money. At least he presumed they didn’t want money. That was it, he didn’t know what they wanted. It wasn’t as if he could go to the library and look them up, if of course the library had been open, which it wasn’t. Anyway, he couldn’t just Google them. Actually, when he thought about it, he could of course Google them, but who knows what that might come up with, after all, that was people again. He suspected that goblins and real magical people, whoever they were, were unlikely to be posting or blogging about themselves, with the possible exception of Mephisto.

  On Clayton Road, Kirby called in at the newsagent, bought a paper, then crossed the road and opened the door to the coffee shop. His mind worked best when it thought he wasn’t looking. In this case, that meant doing the cryptic crossword, or rather trying to do the cryptic crossword. As a detective, he always thought he should be better at them than he was.

  In the corner on the sofas was the same group of mums with their four-by-four buggies parked next to them. One of them was bouncing a baby up and down on her lap while still talking to the others. The baby had that concentrated cross-eyed look that said, ‘I think I’m going to throw up.’ The au pairs weren’t there, no doubt scared off by the accusing looks the mums had been giving them.

  ‘Hello, again. Flat white, wasn’t it?’

  Kirby glanced at all the options chalked on the board. There were too many. ‘Er, yes, thank you.’

  ‘Skimmed, semi or soya?’

  ‘Sorry?’ The trouble was when he left his mind working on something in the background it was like running a memory-hungry program on a rather slow computer, everything else suffered. ‘Er, yes, semi please.’

  Kirby took his coffee and wandered towards the same table he’d sat at the day before. At the back, blending in with a group of other grey cardigans, was Edna. She wasn’t talking, just listening. He suspected that Edna did a lot of that, and unlike most people she really listened. Forget social media, there was little to beat the grey-cardigan telegraph when it came to finding out what was going on locally. Edna nodded in his direction.

  Kirby folded the paper and took out a pen, the free one that came in the mail yesterday with the brochure asking him if was saving for his own funeral so as not to be a burden on his family. He’d looked to see how long the policy ran so that he might schedule his own demise, but it didn’t say. Clue one down, “One who criticises prison”. Anyone who’s been there, Kirby thought, but then it’s only seven letters.

  ‘One across, the answer’s scarlet,’ Edna said, looming over his shoulder.

  ‘You start with the down clues,’ Kirby said, trying to sound matter of fact, as if he’d known she was there, which he hadn’t. ‘They’re supposed to be easier. They use up their best ones early on.’

  ‘The answer’s still scarlet.’

  Kirby frowned as Edna sat down. One down, “Mark from a wound girl allows to become red”.

  ‘See, mark from a wound, scar. Allowed, let and…’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Kirby said, turning the paper over. ‘But I don’t suppose you’ve come over just to irritate me by helping with the crossword. Or at least not the crossword part.’

  Edna ignored the sarcasm. ‘Find much at the girls’ place?’

  ‘That’s quick, even for the grey-cardigan drums.’

  Edna smiled and nodded towards the back of the room. ‘Oh, they’re good. Don’t miss much that lot. But they’re not that good. Harold told me last night.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Did he tell you Mephisto’s been to see him?’

  Kirby shook his head. ‘No’

  ‘Well he has.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Making threats.’

  ‘Harold strikes me as the sort who can take care of himself. I’ve seen that coat of his.’

  ‘Harold, oh I’m not worried about, Harold. He was threatening his family.’

  Funny, Kirby thought, he’d never imagined Harold as having family. ‘Do they live near?’

  Edna narrowed her eyes at him in the way that said, ‘How can you be so stupid?’

  ‘They’re not here,’ she said, emphasising the “here”.

  Kirby sipped at his coffee. ‘Then they’re a little outside my jurisdiction.’

  ‘Hmm,’ Edna said, as if reluctantly accepting the point. ‘Also, if that numpty Mephisto is making threats, then Marianne’s behind them.’

  ‘I take it that’s worse?’

  Edna sucked in a breath. ‘And getting potentially worse all the time she’s here.’ She sniffed the air. ‘I can almost taste it. It’s like it’s swirling in the air, a vortex that’s slowly getting tighter, spinning faster. Magic is like dust.’ She waved a hand above her head. ‘Out there in space, it’s spinning around until it forms clumps, which form bigger clumps, which spin faster and eventually they become something substantial.’

  Kirby stared at Edna. ‘You been watching that Professor Brian Cox?’

  ‘Might ’ave been.’

  ‘Or of course it could just be the steam from the coffee machines.’

  Edna smacked Kirby on the arm in rebuke, with, he had to admit, surprising force. He suppressed a whimper. ‘Anyway,’ he said, which came out as more of a squeak. ‘Anyway,’ he repeated, making an effort to lower the tone of his voice. ‘It�
��s not good.’

  ‘No, it means Harold could be distracted and he’ll want to go back and make sure they’re alright; warn them.’ She frowned. ‘Which means I could end up looking after that damned shop.’ Then she brightened up and smiled, gently patting Kirby on the arm this time. ‘You should go with him.’

  ‘Me! That other...’ He found his throat tightening as he forced out the words, ‘other world. Why?’

  ‘So you can see what this is really all about.’

  twenty-EIGHT

  ‘So you still at your father’s?’ Marianne asked as she and Sarah waited at the entrance to Jesmond Metro station.

  ‘Yes, although I’m going to go back to the flat in the morning.’

  ‘Good idea,’ Marianne said. ‘And what’s he doing now?’

  Sarah grinned. ‘He thinks I’m in my room “resting” and he thinks he’s watching the highlights of today’s cricket.’

  ‘Excellent,’ Marianne said. ‘You’re learning.’ She smiled at her daughter. ‘Nice dress by the way, suits you.’

  Sarah returned the smile. ‘Roger always said I looked good in dresses, that I had the legs for them.’

  Marianne raised an eyebrow. ‘Roger?’

  Sarah peered at the ground and shuffled her feet. ‘An ex.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Sarah shrugged.

  ‘Hmm, well never mind that now. They’re here. Come on.’

  Marianne led the way into the station concourse. She smiled at the man operating the barrier. He smiled back and the gate swung open as a group of about twenty or thirty goblins in grey hoodies came up the steps. Other passengers stood back to let them through.

  Outside, the same thing happened as had in the station, people stepped aside and stood still as the goblins headed out along Eslington Road, dividing into groups as they reached the junction. It was as if people’s lives were on hold for a few seconds, which in effect they were. Then again, as in the Metro, they went about their business as if nothing had happened. A few sniffed the air before shrugging and walking on, but that was it.

  ‘Are they necessary?’ Sarah asked, wrinkling her nose.

  Marianne smiled. ‘They have their uses.’

  ‘When you’re not around they’ll be fighting amongst themselves like the other night. One lot killed and burnt one from another gang down in the Dene.’