Jonathan Stroud - Lockwood & Co - The Whispering Skull

‘Ah, you’re a details man. Very good. I’m one myself.’ Saunders sat back, stretched a skinny arm along the back of the sofa. ‘We’re working up at Kensal Green, north-west London. Cemetery clearance. Part of the new government policy of eradicating ARs.’

Lockwood blinked. ‘Eradicating what? Sorry, I must have misheard you there.’

‘ARs. Active Remains. Sources, in other words. Old burials that are becoming unsafe, and might cause danger to the neighbourhood.’

‘Oh, like the Stepney Creeper!’ I said. ‘You remember last year?’ The Creeper had been a Phantasm that had issued from a grave in a Stepney churchyard, drifted across the road, and killed five people in nearby houses on two consecutive nights. On the third night Rotwell agents had cornered it, forced it back into its tomb, and destroyed it with a controlled explosion. The incident had caused a lot of anxiety, because the churchyard had previously been declared safe.

Mr Saunders rewarded me with a toothy grin. ‘Exactly, girlie! A bad business. But this is the way the Problem is going. New Visitors appearing all the time. That Stepney grave was three hundred years old. Had it caused trouble before? No! But afterwards they discovered that the person in that grave had been murdered all that time ago, and of course those are the spirits most likely to become restless, as we know – murder victims, suicides and so on. So government policy now is to monitor all cemeteries, and that’s what Sweet Dreams Excavation and Clearance is doing up at Kensal Green.’

‘It’s a massive cemetery,’ George said. ‘How many graves are you digging up?’

Saunders scratched the bristles on his chin. ‘A few plots each day. Trick is to weed out the ones that are likely to give us trouble. We do the assessment work after dark, as that’s when psychic emanations are strongest. We’ve got night teams pinpointing suspect graves. They mark ’em with yellow paint. Next morning we dig ’em up and remove the bones.’

‘Sounds dangerous, the night work,’ Lockwood said. ‘Who’s on that team?’

‘Bunch of night-watch kids, some freelance Sensitives. A few adult males to keep the relic-men at bay. They get well paid. Mostly it’s just small-time stuff: Shades, Lurkers, other Type Ones. Type Twos are rare. Anything really iffy, we hire agents in advance.’

Lockwood frowned. ‘But how can you assess this danger in advance? I don’t understand.’

‘Ah, that’s down to Joplin here.’ Mr Saunders dug his companion roughly in the ribs with a bony elbow. The little man gave a start, and dropped half his documents on the floor; Saunders glared impatiently as he scrabbled to retrieve them. ‘He’s invaluable, Albert is, when we can find him . . . Well, go on, then. Tell ’em what you do.’

Mr Albert Joplin straightened and blinked at us amiably. He was younger than Saunders – early forties, I guessed – but equally dishevelled. His curly brown hair hadn’t seen a comb in weeks, perhaps years. He had a pleasant, rather weak face: round and ruddy in the cheeks, and tapering to an undershot jaw. His apologetic, smiling eyes were framed by a pair of small round glasses, not dissimilar to George’s. He wore a crumpled linen jacket, rather dusted with dandruff, a checked shirt, and a pair of dark slacks that were ever so slightly too short for him. He sat stoop-shouldered, hands drawn protectively over his papers in the manner of a shy and studious dormouse.

‘I’m the project’s archivist,’ he said. ‘I provide assistance to the operation.’

Lockwood nodded encouragingly. ‘I see. In what way?’

‘Digging!’ Mr Saunders cried, before Joplin could continue. ‘He’s the best excavator in the business, aren’t you, Albert, eh?’ He reached over and squeezed one of the small man’s puny biceps in theatrical fashion, then winked at us again. ‘You wouldn’t think so, to look at him, would you? But I’m serious. Thing is, though, while the rest of us dig for bones, Joplin here digs for stories . Well, come on, man, don’t just sit there like a melon. Fill them in.’

‘Yes, well . . .’ Joplin, flustered, adjusted his spectacles nervously. ‘I’m a scholar, really. I look through the historical burial records and cross-reference them with old newspaper reports to find what you might call the really “risky” interments: you know, people who came to nasty or tragic ends. I then alert Mr Saunders, and he takes whatever action he thinks necessary.’

‘Usually we clear the grave without problems,’ Saunders said. ‘But not always.’

The scholar nodded. ‘Yes. We were working in Maida Vale Cemetery two months ago. I’d pinpointed the grave of an Edwardian murder victim – all overgrown, it was; the stone had been quite forgotten. One of those night-watch boys was busy clearing the brambles away, getting it ready for the digging, when up popped the ghost, right out of the ground, and tried to drag him into it! Horrid grey woman, apparently, with her throat hanging open and eyes staring out of their sockets. Poor little chap let out a squeal like a dying rabbit. He was ghost-touched, of course. Agents got to him and gave him boosters, so I believe he may recover . . .’ Mr Joplin’s voice ebbed away; he smiled sadly. ‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘that’s what I do.’

‘Excuse me,’ George said, ‘but are you the same Albert Joplin who wrote the chapter on medieval burials in Pooter’s History of London’s Graveyards ?’

The little man blinked. His eyes brightened. ‘Why . . . yes. Yes, I am!’

‘Good article, that,’ George said. ‘A real page-turner.’

‘How extraordinary that you should have read it!’

‘I thought your speculation about the tethering of the soul was very interesting.’

‘Did you? Well, it’s such a fascinating theory. It seems to me—’

I stifled a yawn; I was beginning to wish I’d brought my pillow. But Lockwood was impatient too. He held up a hand. ‘It seems to me we should hear why you need our help. Mr Saunders, if you could please get to the point . . .’

‘Quite right, Mr Lockwood!’ The excavator cleared his throat, adjusted the hat upon his knee. ‘You’re a man of business, like myself. Good. Well, the last few nights we’ve been surveying the south-east area of the cemetery. Kensal Green’s an important burial ground. Established in 1833. Covers seventy acres of prestige land.’

‘Got many fine tombs and mausoleums,’ Joplin added. ‘ Lovely Portland stone.’

‘Aren’t there catacombs there too?’ George asked.

Saunders nodded. ‘Indeed. There’s a chapel in the centre, with catacombs beneath. They’ve been closed off now – it’s too dangerous, with all those exposed coffins. But up top, the burial plots are laid out around gently curving avenues between Harrow Road and the Grand Union Canal. Mid-Victorian burials, common folk mostly. The avenues are shaded by rows of old lime trees. It’s all peaceful enough, and relatively few Visitors have been reported, even in the last few years.’

Mr Joplin had been rifling through the papers in his arms, pulling out sheets and stuffing them back again. ‘If I could just— Ah, here are the plans of the south-east corner!’ He drew out a map showing two or three looping paths, with tiny numbered boxes marking the grave-plots in between. Stapled to this was a grid filled with spidery handwriting – a list of names. ‘I’ve been checking the recorded burials in this zone,’ he said, ‘and found nothing for anyone to fear . . . Or so I thought.’

‘Well,’ Saunders said, ‘as I say, my teams have been walking the avenues, hunting for psychic disturbances. All went smoothly until last night, when they were exploring the plots just east of this aisle here.’ He jabbed at the map with a dirty finger.