Graham Masterton - The Doorkeepers

“I know I do. But at least I can understand what they’re saying. Did you bring any dental floss?”

“I forgot. We’ll have to buy some.”

“They’ve probably never heard of dental floss in England. Or they call it something totally different, like ‘trousers’, and we’ll never find out what it is.”

“What are you panicking about? You never used to floss at all until you met me.”

“Of course I flossed before I met you. You’re trying to make me sound like some kind of animal.”

“You are a kind of animal. You’re more like an animal than any man I ever met. Gentle, affectionate, stupid and manic-depressive.”

“I love you, too.”

Nancy went to the window and drew back the nets, and Josh climbed off the bed and joined her. Six stories below they could see rows of small backyards, some with sheds, some with pink-blossoming trees, some with rusty automobile parts, some with fish ponds. In the distance, in the late-afternoon haze, they could see thousands of chimney pots, and turrets, and spires, and more trees. Josh had never seen a city with so many trees in it.

He picked up his A-Z. “That’s south-east we’re looking at, toward Fulham.”

“They call it ‘Fullum’. I heard a woman in reception.”

“All right, Fullum. And beyond Fullum is Walham Green, except they probably call it ‘Wallum’. And beyond Wallum Green is … the River Thames.” He closed the book. “I don’t know whether I want to see the Thames. I keep thinking about Julia floating along it. Upstream. Empty.”

They were still staring out of the window when the news came on the television: “In the Middle East … six Israelis were killed and two seriously injured … Police today released a new picture of the murdered woman found floating in the Thames two days ago … Miss Julia Winward, twenty-three, from San Francisco, California, could have been the seventh victim of a serial killer who mutilates his victims and drops them in the river at or near Southwark Bridge … If you knew Julia Winward or if you saw her at any time in the past twelve months, please contact New Scotland Yard on this special number …”

“You see,” said Nancy, curling a finger around Josh’s hair. “They’re doing everything they can.”

“Sure,” he said. He couldn’t take his eyes away from the picture of Julia on the television screen, smiling at him. He could remember the morning that he had taken that picture. He could remember it as clearly as if it had been today.

That afternoon, shortly before five o’clock, a police car came to collect them and take them to the mortuary at St Thomas’s Hospital. The car was so tiny that Josh had to try three different ways of folding himself up before he managed to climb into the front passenger seat. They drove along the Embankment, and for the first time Josh saw the River Thames, shining brilliant gold in the afternoon sun.

Josh peered at it over his knees. “It’s a whole lot wider than I imagined it,” he told the young constable who was driving them. “I thought it was going to be real narrow. You know, and dirty.”

“Oh, no, sir, it’s much cleaner than it used to be. They’ve caught salmon, right up as far as Chelsea Harbour. Mind you, I wouldn’t swim in it. Too many dodgy currents.”

Josh thought of the “dodgy currents” that must have swirled Julia’s body upstream, like Ophelia.

Then they were driving around Parliament Square, and he saw Westminster Abbey for the first time, and the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben. He always felt a sense of history in San Francisco, with the wooden houses and the cable cars, but London’s history was different: older, darker, much more complicated, much more multi-layered. In a way that he had never expected, he found it threatening – as if the British knew something that he didn’t know, and would never tell him what it was.

They drove over Westminster Bridge. “Earth has not anything to show more fair,” quoted the young constable.

“I’m sorry?”

“William Wordsworth, that’s what he wrote about standing on Westminster Bridge.”

“William Wordsworth actually wrote that here?”

“Well, no, sir. I expect he went home and did it.”

Josh turned and looked at the constable and said, “Do you mind if I ask your name?”

“Not at all, sir. Police Constable Smart.”

“Yes,” said Josh. “I might have guessed.”

The morgue attendant switched on the closed-circuit TV camera and there she suddenly was. Her face was fluorescent gray, like all drowned people. Her eyes were open and staring straight at him, out of the screen.

“Yes,” he said. “That’s her.”

DS Paul said, “Thank you, Mr Winward,” and led him out of the room.

“Is that it?” he asked her.

“Just for the moment, yes. But depending on what response we get from the public in the next thirty-six hours, we may ask you to go on television and make an appeal for witnesses. You wouldn’t mind doing that, would you?”

He shook his head. He was beginning to feel badly jet-lagged and the floor kept rising and falling. Nancy said, “Let’s go back to the hotel, OK? I think you’ve had enough for one day.”

They walked along a long, antiseptic-smelling corridor. An elderly woman approached them, pushed in a wheelchair by a hospital porter in a turban. She was so old that she was almost transparent: white hair, white skin, even her eyes were colorless. As she was wheeled past them, she whispered, “Jack.”

Five

Josh froze, and then turned slowly around to stare at the old woman as she was pushed away.

“Josh?” said Nancy. “What’s the matter?”

“That old woman … she just said my name. Well, she said ‘Jack’, anyhow.”

“Oh, come on, you’re imagining it. How could she know your name?”

“I swear it, Nance. She said, ‘Jack’.”

DS Paul impatiently looked at her watch. “I’m sorry,” she said, “but I’m late for a meeting. Perhaps I can call you tomorrow morning.”

“Oh, sure, yes,” said Josh, still staring after the old woman. She was pushed through a pair of double swing doors, and then she was gone. Josh hesitated for a moment and then began to hurry after her.

“Josh!” Nancy protested, jogging after him with her Indian bead bag slap-slap-slapping on her thigh.

Josh shoved his way through the double doors and there was the woman and her Sikh attendant, silhouetted against the window at the end of the corridor. He called out, “Pardon me!” and hurried after them. He reached the old woman just as the Sikh was about to open a door marked X-ray Department: Authorized Personnel Only.

“I’m sorry,” said Josh, “but I believe this lady called out my name.”

The Sikh porter stared at him impassively. “She is having to go for an X-ray, sir. Excuse me.”

Josh hunkered down beside the wheelchair and took hold of the old lady’s hand. The skin was thin and crinkly, like tissue paper. She looked down at him and gave him something that could have passed for a smile. She was so old that it was impossible to tell if she had ever been really beautiful, but Josh could see that she had never been ugly.

“You said my name. Back there, in the corridor, you said ‘Jack’.”

“Jack be nimble, Jack be quick,” she whispered. She spoke so softly that he could barely hear her.

“How did you know what my name was? That’s what my mother calls me, Jack.”

“I know what you’re looking for, Jack. But you won’t find it, you know. Not unless you look here.” She tapped her forehead with her long chalky fingernail.

“I don’t understand what you mean.”