“Go on then, give her the list,” said Wati in the statue again. “She’s not your familiar, you get it? Not even temporarily. She’s my friend, and she’s doing me a favour. Let’s see what we can find out.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
HER BOSS WAS SYMPATHETIC BUT COULD NOT HOLD THINGS forever. Marge had to return to work.
Leon’s mother said she was coming to London. She and Marge had never met, nor even spoken until the awkward phone call Marge had made to tell her about Leon’s disappearance. The woman obviously neither knew nor wanted to know details of Leon’s life. She thanked Marge for “keeping her up to date.”
“I’m not sure that’s the best way to do it,” she had said when Marge suggested they work together to try to find out what had happened.
“I don’t feel like the police…” Marge had said. “I mean I’m sure they’re doing what they can, but, you know, they’re busy and we might be able to think of stuff that they can’t. We could keep on looking, you know?” His mother had said she would contact Marge if she found anything out, but neither of them thought she would. So Marge did not mention Leon’s last message.
When she said, “I’ll let you know if I find anything out, too,” she was aware abruptly that she was not making a promise to the woman as much as to herself, to the universe, to Leon, to something, to not leave this, to not stop. Marge went through anger, panic, resignation, sadness. Sometimes-how could she not?-she tried out the thought that she had been very wrong about him, that Leon had just deserted her and his entire life. Maybe he had been involved in a scam gone wrong, was mentally ill, baying somewhere on a Cornish coast or Dundee, was no longer who he had been. The ideas did not stick.
She sent Leon’s mother the keys to his flat that she had had cut, but cut more copies first. She sneaked in and went from room to room, as if she might soak up some clue. For some time each room was as she remembered it, down to the mess, even. She turned up one day and the flat was a shelclass="underline" his family had taken Leon’s things away.
The police to whom Marge spoke, those to whom she could speak, still implied that there was little to worry about, or, as time went on, little they could do. What Marge wanted was to speak to those other, odder police visitors. Repeated calls to the Scotland Yard would not yield any confirmation that they existed. The Barons whose numbers she was given were none of them the right man. There were no Collingswoods.
Were they who they had claimed? Were they a gang of miscreants hunting Leon for some infraction? Was it from them that he was in hiding?
Her first day back her coworkers were sympathetic. The paperwork she dealt with was easy and not important, and though the hesitancy of her colleagues’ greetings was wearing it was also touching, and she put up with it. She returned to her flat in the same reverie that had taken over as her default mood since Leon disappeared.
Something troubled her. Some part of the city’s afternoon noise, the car grumbling, the children shouting, the mobile phones singing polyphonic grots of song. Repeatedly whispered, getting louder until she could no longer mistake it, someone was saying her name.
“Marginalia.”
A man and boy had arrived, appeared silently before she had her keys out. One was to either side of her front door, leaning with a shoulder to the bricks, facing each other with the door in between them so they boxed her in. The young staring boy in a suit; a shabbier, weatherbeaten man. The man spoke.
“Marjorie, Marjorie, it’s a disaster, the record company’s been on the blower, no one likes the album. Get down to the studio, we’re going to have to remaster.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t…” She stepped back. Neither boy nor man touched her, but they walked with her, in perfect time with each other and with her, so she remained corralled by them. “What are you, what are you…?” she said.
The man said, “We was particularly hoping you might be able to persuade that guitarist to stop by again, lay down some licks. What was his moniker? Billy?”
Marge stopped moving, and started again. The man breathed out smoke. She staggered backward. She wanted to run, but she was hobbled by normality. It was daylight. Three feet away people were walking; there were vehicles and dogs and trees, newsagents. She tried to back away from the man, but he and his boy walked with her, and kept her between them.
“Who the bloody hell are you?” she said. “Where’s Leon?”
“Well that’s just it, isn’t it? We’d posalutely adore to know. Technically I grant you it’s less Leon that we’re chasing than his old mucker Billy Harrow. Leon I’ve a sense of where he might be-lose some weight, Subby says; I can’t help it I says, little morsels like that-” He licked his lips. “But Billy and we was just catching up and then it all went fiddly. So. Where’d he get off to?”
Marge ran. She made for the main road. The two stayed with her. They kept up with her, moving crabwise, the boy on one side, the man on the other. They did not touch her but stayed close.
“Where is he? Where is he?” the man said. The boy moaned. “You must excuse my loquacious friend-never bleeding shuts up, does he? Though I love him and he has his uses. But he’s not wrong also; he raises an excellent point-where is Billy Harrow? Was it you spirited the lad away?”
Marge was gripping her handbag to her chest and stumbling. The man circled her as she kept going, ring-a-rosying with the boy. People on the street were staring.
“Who are you?” Marge shouted. “What did you do with Leon?”
“Why, ate him up, bless your soul! But let’s see who you’ve been chatting to…” He licked the air in front of her face. She shied away and screamed, but his tongue did not quite touch her. He smacked his lips. He breathed out, another jet of smoke, no cigarette in mouth or hand.
“Help me!” she shouted. People around her hesitated.
“See, it was easy to find you because of all the spoor dribbled between here and Leon-the-vol-au-vent, so I’d expect to…” Lick lick. “Not much, Subby. Tell the truth now, chicken, where’s old Billy?”
“You alright, love? You want a hand?” A big young man had approached, fists balled and ready. A friend stood behind him, in the same fight stance.
“If you speak again,” the shabby man said, not glancing at him, still staring at Marge, “or if you step closer, my lad and I will take you sailing, and you will not enjoy what’s under the mizzen. We’ll run you up a dress in taffeta. Do you understand me? If you speak we will bake you oh my god but the worst cake.” His voice was dropping. He whispered but they heard. He turned then and stared at the two potential rescuers. “Oh, does he mean it does he mean it we can take him you take the kid old flabby’s mine ready on the count of three only he does to be honest seem a bit lairy and et cetera. Want some cake?” He made a ghastly little swallowing laugh noise. “Take another step. Take another step.” He did not speak the last two words but exhaled them.
The birds still shouted, the cars complained, and a few metres away people were talking like talking people everywhere, but where Marge stood she was in a cold and terrifying place. The two men who had come to her aid floundered under Goss’s stare. A moment went and they retreated, to Marge’s horrified “No!” They did not leave, only stood a few feet farther away, watching, as if the punishment for losing their nerve was to spectate.
“Now if you’ll forgive that interruption…” And Goss licked the air around her again. Marge was clamped between the two figures as surely as if they actually touched her.
“Alright then,” Goss said at last, stood up straight. “I can’t get a snifter.” He shrugged at his companion, who shrugged back. “Seems not, Subby.” They both stepped back.
“Sorry to bother you,” Goss said to Marge. “We just wanted to check out whether you knew anything, you see.” She retreated. He followed, but not so close as before. He let her get away a little. She tried to breathe. “Because we’re so eager to find out what young Billy’s up to, because we thought he knew everything and then we thought he knew nothing, and then disappearing like that, we thought maybe he must know everything again. But I will be buggered if we can find him. Which”-he waggled his tongue-“means likely enough he has ways and means of not leaving his savour-trail. Wondered if the two of you had spoken. Wondered if you might’ve done a little magery-knackery-jiggery-pokery. I taste not.” Marge breathed in big shudders.