‘Since when have you become a stickler for DEPRAC’s rules, Luce? Anyway, we need all the help we can get on this one. We’re in a race against time with Kipps. Plus this job is more dangerous and puzzling than I thought.’
‘You mean the mirror, of course.’ I could still picture the body in the graveyard: the popping eyes, the mouth drawn back into a slash of horror.
‘The mirror, yes; but there’s more to it than that. Barnes isn’t telling us everything. This isn’t any old Source, which is why George’s job is so crucial now.’ Lockwood stretched languidly. ‘Anyway, Flo’s all right. She’s not quite as antisocial as the other relic-men. She’ll talk to you, though she is cranky. You just need to know the right way— Which reminds me . . .’ Lockwood swivelled suddenly in his seat, lifted the swinging lavender crucifix, and spoke through the hatch. ‘If we could stop by Blackfriars Station, driver . . .You know that little newsagent there? . . . Yes.’ He turned to me and grinned. ‘We need to get some liquorice.’
Between Blackfriars and Southwark bridges, which connect the City of London with the ancient borough of Southwark, the river Thames turns gradually to the south-east. Here the current slows slightly, and at low tide a broad expanse of mud flats is exposed beneath the south side of Southwark Bridge, where sediment dropped by the river has built up around the curve. Lockwood pointed this out to me as we walked across the bridge in the glare of the dying sun.
‘She’ll be down there, most likely,’ he said. ‘Unless she’s changed her habits, which is about as probable as her changing her underwear. She starts the night at the Southwark Reaches, where stuff’s washed up by the tide. Later, she’ll move downstream, following the tideline.’
‘What’s she looking for?’ I asked, though I had guessed already.
‘You name it. Bones, relics, drowned things, things scoured up from the river mud.’
‘She sounds delightful,’ I said. ‘Can’t wait to meet her.’ I adjusted my rapier grimly.
‘Don’t try any heavy stuff on Flo,’ Lockwood warned. ‘In fact, the best thing is to leave the talking to me. We can go down here.’
We ducked through a gap in the parapet, and descended some stone steps that hugged the brickwork of the bridge. Its arch soared over us; there was a powerful smell of mud and decay. We alighted on a cobbled lane which ran along the embankment, and walked down it a little way. A rusted streetlight clung like a dead tree to the low wall overlooking the river. Behind us were warehouses, dark and cliff-like. A faint apricot-pink sphere of light gleamed about the lamp, illuminating nothing except a narrow flight of steps leading below the wall.
Above and all around were space and river mist, and the flowing onset of the night. Lockwood said, ‘We move carefully now. Don’t want to scare her off.’
The steps led steeply down towards the river. From the wall we could see the northern bank – a broken snake of lights, with London’s great grey mess of spires behind. The tide was fully out; the river’s sullen glister hung low and far away.
It was very quiet everywhere.
Lockwood nudged me, pointed. A lantern was moving out on the mud flats, an orange light, held close to the ground. Its reflection, flitting just beneath it, faint as a Shade, swooped wet and pale across the shingle, lighting the stones and weed and all the river’s washed-up flotsam – the wood and plastics, fragments of metal, bottles, drowned and rotting things. A stooped, slow-moving figure walked above the lantern-light, cocooning it, as if to shroud it jealously from all sight. It moved with methodical purpose, stopping now and then to pick at something in the debris. A heavy sack, which it dragged behind, carved an intermittent furrow in the slime. Whether it was the trail it left, or its hunched and rounded shape, this creature seemed more like a giant snail from the bottom of the Thames than a fellow human being.
‘You want to talk to that?’ I whispered.
Lockwood made no answer, but pattered down the river stairs. I followed. Halfway down, the steps became soft and wet with moss. Lockwood reached the last step, but went no further. He raised a hand and called out over the dark expanse. ‘Hey, Flo!’
Away across the mud the figure froze. I sensed, rather than saw, the pale face staring at us from afar.
Lockwood raised his voice again. ‘Flo!’
‘What if it is? I haven’t done nothing.’
The reply, rather high and cracked, didn’t carry well; it would have been natural to move closer, but Lockwood was cautious. He remained standing on the bottom step.
‘Hey, Flo! It’s Lockwood!’
Silence. The figure straightened abruptly; I thought for a moment it was going to turn and run. But then the voice came again, faint, hostile and guarded. ‘You? What the bloody hell do you want?’
‘Oh, that’s fine,’ Lockwood murmured. ‘She’s in a good mood.’ He cleared his throat, called out again. ‘Can you talk?’
The distant person considered; for a few seconds we heard nothing except the sloop and slosh of the river along the shore. ‘No. I’m busy! Go away.’
‘I’ve brought liquorice!’
‘What, you’re trying to bribe me now? Bring money!’ More silence; just the sucking of the water. Away in the haze a head was cocked to one side. ‘What kind of liquorice?’
‘Come and see!’
I watched as the figure began to plough its way rapidly towards us through the mire. It was a limping witch, a night-hag from a child’s fever-dreams. My heart beat fast. ‘Um . . . what would have happened,’ I said, ‘if she wasn’t in a good mood?’
‘Best not to ask,’ Lockwood said. ‘I saw her chuck an agent into the river once,’ he went on reflectively. ‘Just lifted her up by the leg and tossed her in. Flo was in a good mood that day too, as it happens. But she’ll like you, I’m almost sure. Just don’t say much, and stay out of stabbing distance. I’ll handle it from here.’
The shambling creature drew close, dragging the sack, bearing the light before it. I glimpsed a pale and filthy hand, the crown of a tattered straw hat. Great boots sucked and slurped in the mud and shingle. Lockwood and I instinctively moved up a step. A sudden groan, a curse; the sack was swung up and over to land on the stone below. At last the figure straightened; she stood in the mud beneath the steps and stared up at us. In the light of the lantern I got a proper look at her for the first time.
The first shock, now that she’d rid herself of her burden, was that she was tall – half a head taller than me. It was hard to tell more about her shape (this was fine by me: no sane person would have wanted to look beneath her clothes). She wore an unutterably foul blue puffa jacket that went down almost to her knees; the lower reaches were dark with moisture, caked with river mud. The zip was open, providing glimpses of a pale expanse of dirty neck, a grimy shirt collar, a patched and shapeless jersey hanging down over ancient and faded jeans. She either had the biggest feet of any female I’d ever met, or was wearing a man’s wellington boots, or both. The boots, which reached her knees, were splayed outwards like a duck’s, and were ripple-stained by muck and water.
A length of rope, tied twice around her waist, served as a makeshift belt. Something hung there in the recesses of the coat. I thought it might have been a sword, which is illegal for a non-agent to wear.
From her hobbling approach and shapeless outline, she might have been very elderly, so the second shock came when she pushed back the broad-brimmed hat. From under it a spray of hair, the colour and stiffness of old straw, radiated outwards from a wide and grubby forehead. Dirt had collected in the creases running across it, and in the lines beside the eyes; in this she was no different from any vagrant queuing for safe quarters overnight. But she was young – still in her teens. She had a small, up-tilted nose, a wide face, pinkish cheeks, smeared with grey, and bright blue eyes that sparkled in the lantern-light. Her mouth was broad and contemptuous, her head jutting forward aggressively. She took me in with a single glance, then focused her attention on Lockwood. ‘Well, you haven’t changed,’ she said. ‘Still as lah-di-dah as ever, I see.’