𝐇𝐨𝐦𝐞┃ Anthony Lockwood┃2┃

Chapter Forty One - Hot Pursuit

It was strange how close the darkness was, even when things seem brightest. Even in the glare of a summer noon, when the pavement bakes and the iron fences are hot to the touch, the shadows are still present. They congregate in doorways and porches, and under bridges, and beneath the brims of gentlemen's hats so you cannot see their eyes. There is darkness in mouths and ears; in bags and wallets; within the swing of men's jackets and beneath the flare of women's skirts. It is carried around, the dark, and its influence stains deep.

That afternoon, Nola sat in the window of a café on Clerkenwell Green, watching the faces in the crowds. Because of her profession, she didn't get out much during the day, and her experience of ordinary people was mostly confined to the ghost-haunted and the dead. Those folk passing her– they represented everyone else: that terrified majority who kept their heads down, put their iron and silver in the windows and tried to get on with life. The young, the old, busy enjoying the bright spring sunshine. They looked harmless enough to her.

Yet somewhere out there, perhaps even among the people passing outside of Nola's window, were those attracted by the dark. It found expression in different ways. Some joined the ghost-cults that had proliferated across London, loudly welcoming the returning dead and trying to hear the messages they brought. Others sought out forbidden artefacts for their danger and rarity. There were stories of rich collectors who had dozens of Sources, stolen from graveyards and secreted in iron vaults underground. And there were those who used the Sources for strange occult rituals. At Lockwood & Co, they'd seen odd markings in the catacombs beneath the Aickmere Brothers department store: evidence of an abandoned circle surrounded by heaps of haunted bones. George had theories, but the exact purpose of the circle – and who was responsible for it - remained in the shadow.

One way or another, then, and despite DEPRAC's best efforts, the black market for artefacts remained strong. And it seemed that, with the wretched Harold Mailer, Nola had stumbled upon one of its main supply lines.

What to do about it, though? Whoever Mailer's contacts were, it was likely the trail would lead to the criminal Winkman family. Flo had seen the mummified head in their possession, after all. If Nola could gain proof of the connection between the Winkmans and the theft of Sources from the furnaces, she would make a decent name for herself.

But that wasn't her main priority. If it had been, she would have probably just have nipped along to Scotland Yard, seen Inspector Barnes and got him to do the work.

No, what she wanted, most particularly, was to retrieve the whispering skull. She wanted the skull back, and that wasn't a statement that she had ever expected to make.

In many ways, the ghost in the jar had been a thorn in Nola's side for quite some time. When she had first encountered it, upon joining Lockwood's company, she had reacted with instant horror and distaste. Those feelings only intensified when it began to speak to her. It was thoroughly, defiantly, exultantly reprehensible. In fact, if you wrote down the ten most unsavoury character traits you could imagine, the skull possessed the nine worst on the list, and it only lacked the tenth because that one frankly wasn't bad enough. The ghost's name was unknown, and much of its past a mystery, though since what little Nola knew of its pre-death career involved grave-robbing, black magic and cold-blooded murder, that wasn't altogether a shame. No one else could hear it speak, so the skull had formed a special bond with her. Since it had the language of a trawlerman and the morals of a weasel, she had to cope with constant psychic sarcasm and abuse, and also learned plenty of new words.       

And yet, for all that Nola disliked it so much, she had come to rely on that ghost too.

At the basic level, it did help her fairly often when she was out at work. Its insights, no matter how fleeting, had saved her many times. It had pinpointed Emma Marchment's ghost, for instance, and perhaps stopped her from blundering straight into her clutches. And the night before, it had dropped a hint – a pretty belated one, admittedly – about the location of the Source in the Ealing Cannibal affair. This was supernatural assistance that no other operative had ever had.