by Heide Goody
The bargemaster nodded approvingly. “What is the smell like?” he asked.
“A teenage boy on the pull,” said Nina.
“Desperation,” said Morag.
“One step up from basic BO. How’s tricks?”
The bargemaster shrugged, sprayed himself liberally and waved for them to come aboard.
There was an unsettlingly organic quality to the Black Barge, Morag decided. Its Alien-themed construction aesthetic extended to the interior, where even the fixtures and fittings seemed to have been formed through unnaturally natural processes. Morag felt as if she was entering a cave. No, that wasn’t it. She felt as if she was entering the dried out and mostly consumed carcass of some long-dead monster. Maybe she was.
Nina flicked casually through the wares as she followed the bargemaster. Morag poked desultorily through Aden-schnat pods, a pot of collected lamisal needles and what looked like some shoddily forged pongroi shaving discs. She stood next to a man who was inspecting a sleeping bondook shambler. It dangled by a single tentacle from a ceiling bar and had its fine membranous wings wrapped about itself.
“Ah. They’re cute when they’re that age,” she said.
The man gave her a haughty sneer. “Who are you?”
Morag showed him her consular mission ID badge. As a supposed joke, Lois the office admin had printed it with a picture of the Marvel superhero Black Widow instead of an actual picture of Morag. After a month on the job no one had yet spotted this discrepancy. Morag didn’t know whether to be offended or flattered.
The man took one look at the ID, dropped the snooty look, tipped his hat to Morag and made swiftly for the exit.
“There’s no point running, Mystic Trevor,” Nina shouted after him. “We know where you live. If you can call it living, eh, Sven?” she said to the bargemaster.
Morag wandered over to them, inspecting items as she did. There wasn’t much on display to get excited about. There was a door and some stairs at the far end of the hold. Perhaps all the juicy goods were held through there.
“So where have you come from this time?” said Nina.
“Utrecht,” he said. “Alappuzha. Hali. Liverpool.”
“Any particular goods you’ve brought in that I should be aware of?”
The bargemaster gave a genial shrug.
“You are such a flirt, Sven.”
Morag saw a pile of papers, held down by a seemingly mundane conch shell, and happened to catch the writing at the top.
“You trade in souls, do you?” she asked. “Humans?”
She looked back along the hold at the filthy boat hands. She realised that the nearest girl was wearing the utterly destroyed remnants of a pair of Converse sneakers.
“Soul cash,” he said, sliding the pile out of view. “Only used for payments.”
“Really?” said Morag. “Because that address on the bottom was a Birmingham address. And it was dated only this morning.”
Nina made a very childish ooh. “Has someone just paid you in souls, Sven? Fresh ones?”
The human captives were on the third floor of Mammon-Mammonson Investments.
Mammonites held things in high value, and value was life itself to them. Humans in general had little value. Humans were ephemeral, unpredictable and frequently useless. (This was a viewpoint that Vivian supposed she and the Mammonites shared.) However, humans as property or collateral could have considerable value, so the Mammonites treated their human property with, if not respect, at least with care.
They weren’t locked away in cells; they were exhibited. Lodge-Mammonson led Rod and Vivian down a long, marble-floored corridor lined on alternate sides with glass-fronted recesses too narrow to qualify as alcoves but deeper than museum cases. In each recess stood a solitary man or woman. The collection was a representative sample of the city’s adult population. Vivian recognized the architect’s intent in the broad offset between niches and sightlines that always led to blank walls: exhibits were to viewed in isolation (and they were never to view each other). There were at least thirty people along the corridor but whoever stood there, stood alone.
Rod found Annie Castleton. The young woman gazed passively out from behind the glass, not a flicker of recognition for Rod: zombie eyes in a tear-stained face.
“You’ve drugged them?” said Rod.
“We wouldn’t want to taint them,” said Lodge-Mammonson.
“Taint?”
“A simple invocation of Ka’teriah Ba,” explained the Mammonite. “Keeps them docile.”
“Allows for convenient storage,” agreed Vivian. “And stops them resisting when you draw their blood.” She pointed at the tell-tale plaster and needle mark in the crook of a man’s arm and then again at another.
Lodge-Mammonson’s expression was initially sharp but almost instantly touched with self-recrimination.
“Why would Mammon-Mammonson Investments wish to take people’s blood?” asked Vivian.
“It would be unprofessional for me to disclose details of confidential business practices,” said Lodge-Mammonson.
Rod pulled out his phone. It was buzzing.
“Campbell,” he said and drew away from the others to speak but then said with deliberate loudness. “Soul cash certificates? Guaranteed by Mammon-Mammonson Investments? You don’t say.”
“Why are you using that silly voice?” said Nina, on the phone inside the Black Barge.
“Because we are currently at Mammon-Mammonson Investments,” said Rod, “probably working the other end of the same case. Someone’s not been playing fair. They’ve been buying up the bodies and souls of gullible idiots who don’t read the small print.”
“Life’s too short to read small print.”
“And there are lots of people here who are paying the price. I think we need to find who’s doing this.”
“Let me ask some questions,” said Nina and ended the call.
“So, who gave you that soul cash?” Morag asked the bargemaster.
His pudgy face produced a reproachful expression.
“There’s no client confidentiality,” said Morag. “You’re a shopkeeper, not a lawyer.”
“I don’t know him,” said Sven.
Nina flicked through her phone and held up an image of Professor Sheikh Omar.
“This guy?” she said.
“No,” said Sven. “Not Omar. Young man. Ugly boy.”
“Ugly boy?” said Nina. She hitched a thumb over her shoulder towards the exit. “You mean that guy with a face like a roadmap of Britain?”
Another shrug but this one conceded she might be right.
“His name?” said Morag.
“I don’t know.”
“Are you lying to me, Sven?” said Nina. “I don’t like it when my friends lie to me.”
“Friends?” he said.
Nina snatched the can of deodorant out of his hand. He looked genuinely crestfallen.
“You don’t deserve this,” she said harshly. “I thought we had something, Sven. A little thing called trust. I want to know who he is, what he was doing here. Did he buy anything, Sven? What did he buy?”
“Just some khei-ba drel and some runes.” Sven gestured dismissively to a basket packed with plastic bags.
“Khei-ba drel?” said Nina. “Fish seed?”
Morag had picked up one of the plastic bags. “You sold him some of these?”
“Yes,” said Sven and cautiously held out his hand to take the deodorant back.
“Have you sold any others since you’ve arrived?”
“No.”
“What are they?” said Nina.
“A real bad trip for anyone who takes them,” said Morag. “A batch of these did the rounds of Edinburgh pubs and clubs last year.”
“They’re drugs?”
“More like encoded imagery and spells.”
“And people died?”
“A couple,” said Morag. “Three people were never found.”
“Where did they go?”
“On a bad
trip,” said Morag.
“Bad Sven. Naughty Sven,” said Nina. “Where did you get them?”
“Payment for passage. Private client. It is just business,” he said.
She sighed heavily but tossed the deodorant back to him. “I can’t stay mad at you, can I? But I’m taking some of these runes for analysis. Drink time,” she said to Morag.
Up on the towpath, Nina multitasked, giving threatening glares to any individuals making for the Black Barge while simultaneously messaging Rod what few details they had uncovered.
“Are we going to get some calls about these rune drug things?”
“Kal Frexo runes. Probably. Of course, there’s a bigger question to answer.”
“Yeah?”
“Like, why do you have a picture of Professor Sheikh Omar on your phone?”
“For obvious reasons.”
Morag gave her a questioning look.
“I’ve got a whole collection of pictures of clunge monkeys I have known and hated,” said Nina, “to show people at times of need.” She flicked through, showing Morag. “He’s a git. He’s a fucker. He’s killed and dismembered six old ladies but no one can prove it. He’s a twat. She’s a sad loner who tangled with the wrong bitch and will one day be eaten by her own cats. He…”
“That’s a picture of a cute spider in a hat,” said Morag.
“I think I put it in the wrong folder.”
“Not your arch nemesis then?”
“No.” Nina, at the apex of the narrow humpbacked bridge, looked around. “I’d have thought Omar would be here by now.”
“Maybe he’s not coming. Even evil wizards take a day off now and then.”
Truman Lodge-Mammonson consulted his phone.
“Ah, Mrs Grey,” he said. “You have an appointment with Mr Mammon-Mammonson himself in five minutes time.”
“I made no such appointment,” said Vivian.
“He did,” said Lodge-Mammonson.
Rod saw a twitch on her face. Vivian didn’t like being ordered around. No one did. But Vivian made sure people knew she didn’t like it, in meaningful and memorable ways.
“I do wish to speak to him,” she admitted.
“Then let’s go see the man,” said Rod.
Lodge-Mammonson’s expression clearly displayed the embarrassment of having to deal with the socially inept.
“The appointment is for Mrs Grey,” he said. “Not you, sir.”
“Xerxes Mammon-Mammonson and I have met before,” Vivian explained.
“I’m not right happy about this. These blokes are dangerous,” said Rod.
“Are you making an accusation?” said Lodge-Mammonson.
“Paying a compliment,” said Rod.
“Oh?” said the Mammonite. “I have a customer feedback form if you’d be willing to offer some formal feedback.”
“What, like ‘these fellers are dangerous, five stars’?”
“Very much so.”
“Insane,” Rod muttered and looked at Vivian. “You’ll be all right?” he said and then realised it was Vivian he was talking to. “Stupid question. I’ll head back to the office. Call me if you need a lift. Or backup.”
With a final gaze at poor zombified Annie Castleton in her glass cage, Rod made for the stairs.
He read the flurry of messages from Nina as he walked down. Soul cash certificates exchanged for alchemical powders and dodgy runes. It was like someone was just trying to make more work for them.
Rod was not a man for strong words but this fool, playing with the lives and souls of the innocent and poking things best left un-poked, roused strong feelings.
“Git.”
Jeffney Ray didn’t like the way the Mammonite on the front desk at Mammon-Mammonson Investments looked at him. Who was he to look down his nose at him? Didn’t he and MMI have a contract? Weren’t they business partners?
“I need to see Mr Lodge-Mammonson,” said Ray, stabbing at Lodge-Mammonson’s image on the ostentatious portrait of the board of directors that hung behind reception.
“He is not available,” said the receptionist smoothly.
“Make him available. I have a payment for him on an agreed debt here.” Ray put an envelope of soul cash certificates on the edge of the counter.
“I can take them,” said the receptionist.
On the surface, this might have seemed a perfectly reasonable request – Ray had one more call to make that day and he could be off and away in seconds if he handed it over – but there was a principle at stake, a matter of prestige and honour.
“I’m not letting you have them,” said Ray, sliding the envelope out of reach.
“I will put them directly in Mr Lodge-Mammonson’s hand,” said the receptionist.
“I don’t trust you to.”
“Are you saying I am a liar?” said the receptionist with slow deliberateness.
“I’m saying that, if you don’t change your tune, mate, we’re either taking this to Mr Mammon-Mammonson himself or we’re taking it outside.”
The Mammonite put a large hunting knife on the counter. He didn’t make a thing of it. He didn’t even look at it while he did it.
“Mr Mammon-Mammonson is not available either,” he said.
The receptionist looked back over his shoulder. A big man – even from across the lobby, Ray could see he was a human man – was coming down the stairs, talking distractedly on his phone.
“Would you like to take this up with the gentleman from the consular mission?” suggested the receptionist.
The big man took a turn at the foot of the stairs and continued down to the basement.
Ray gave the uppity receptionist a cold stare, to let the bhul-gen know that he’d just had a narrow escape.
“Directly in his hand,” he said, pushing the envelope at the Mammonite, and left swiftly before he could reply.
Richard wrapped a plaster around Morag Junior’s index finger.
“I think that’s enough plasters now,” she said.
“Yes, I think so,” he agreed.
Junior’s hands had seven plasters on them, covering the scratches and the one considerable gouging that Mrs Atraxas’s long-haired cat had given her.
“Did the cat need a haircut?” Richard asked.
“Certainly didn’t want it,” said Junior. “I think she was actually harvesting fur for, um, knitting.”
“I didn’t know you could knit with cat hair.”
“You can try.”
“Chocolate?”
Richard offered Junior a plate on which he had laid out segments of Terry’s Chocolate Orange in a decorative pattern. Richard had a thing for chocolate oranges. Someone had once told him that he would like them. So he did. Many of Richard’s lifestyle choices had been made out of an uncontrollable need to please others. It explained such diverse choices as the soft floral furnishings in the flat, the Jeffrey Archer novels on the bookshelves, the big hipster beard, the lumberjack shirts, the bagpipes in the corner and, most recently, Richard’s decision to drink kale smoothies at any opportunity. It was also the reason he and Junior were currently tackling an enormous jigsaw: the result of her off-hand comment about puzzles.
“I’ve sorted out all the water bits,” he said.
“What do you want me to do?” she asked.
“Maybe find all the bits of the side of the boat.”
She looked at the picture on the box. It was a painting of a canal boat, bedecked in flowers, gliding serenely past a country pub with a thatched roof while swallows swooped in the sky above. Junior, always an art critic, judged it to belong to the school of horribly twee and nostalgic art. It was the kind of thing Hitler would have approved of.
“Bits of boat,” she sighed. “Right.”
“Do you like canal boats?” he asked.
She had visions of him going out and buying a barge or booking them both on a boating holiday if she gave the wrong answer.
“No, I do not, Richard.”
Xerxes Mammon-Mammons
on, chair of governors at Thatcher Academy and managing director of Mammon-Mammonson Investments, had an office that Vivian judged to be far bigger than one individual could possibly need. Mammonites were not wasteful creatures and tolerated conspicuous consumption of wealth only when it contributed to something of even greater value. Vivian couldn’t guess how much rent per square foot this office demanded but Xerxes Mammon-Mammonson must have thought it was worth every penny. The same must have gone double for the eight-foot portrait of himself that stared down from the wall.
Xerxes stood at the broad office window, gazing out over the city with his hands clasped behind his back, his legs spread, the very image of a general observing his troops, an emperor surveying his lands. It was a calculated pose and the Mammonite held it even when the door clicked closed behind Vivian and she was alone with him.
She decided she wouldn’t be the first to speak. If he wanted to stand there, trying to send a message with his power pose, she wasn’t going to stop him. On a nearby table, quite incongruous in the corporate setting, was a plush stuffed toy. It looked like the invention of a demented and colour-blind seamstress but Vivian had actually seen a toy very much like it in a meeting with the consular mission’s marketing gurus, Chad and Leandra: one of the Venislarn-themed plushies they had commissioned to make the Venislarn “more relatable” when revealed to the public. Vivian was unaware that the prototypes had gone into full production. She picked it up and gave it a squeeze. It was, she deduced, supposed to be a cute and cuddly representation of the water god Daganau-Pysh. The real Daganau-Pysh didn’t have jolly pink tentacles with laced edges.
“It is for my daughter,” said Xerxes and turned round. “Assuming she gets top marks on her English project.”
“I believe education is its own reward,” said Vivian.
Xerxes grinned, folds forming in his leathery, albeit handsome, face.
“I couldn’t agree more, Mrs Grey. Which always makes me wonder why the government gives it away for free.”
“Because an educated populace is more profitable than an uneducated one.”
“You have the soul of an accountant,” said Xerxes.
“Thank you,” said Vivian.
He crossed the room, held his hand out for the toy and set it down on the table.
