Kill Fish Jones (6 page)

We put him in the corner of the crypt. A quiet corner. But by then I reckon he had already been disturbed more than I care to think about.

‘So you think that's it, then? That all this is down to some kind of dreadful curse, put on us by a dead man called Lampwick the Robber?' Marsha frowned. ‘It's like something out of a horror novel!'

Susan drew a slow breath. ‘And yet … there was something about the way the crypt felt not long after that coffin was brought in. As if … some creature was there, watching me.'

She looked over at Fish, who nodded. He would have bet everything he had that he knew exactly which creature had been there, watching Susan as she made a few last checks and then locked up to go home. The demon of Lampwick the Robber's curse. He understood now what the creature was doing – it was making sure the curse happened properly.

‘Yes,' said Jon. ‘That is what I think. I don't care for myself any more – everything I had is gone – but I'm here to help you and Fish. And you, ma'am,' he added, looking at Marsha. ‘If the curse was confined to just the people directly connected with the exhumation, then it would be the vicar, Steve, me and Susan who
would be dead or facing death. But we have seen that it goes further than that; it includes our loved ones too, our close family. Right through from wives,' his voice trembled, thinking of his beloved Emily, ‘to brothers-in-law, as Reg was to Susan. So if I'm right, everyone around this table is on the list.'

In the corner, Grimshaw scribbled in his notebook. He was having a very interesting time. He had found another human who was behaving with great dignity in the face of misfortune. He wrote: ‘
Unselfish Desire to Help Others
'.

‘So what do we do?' asked Marsha helplessly.

They gazed at each other in silence for a moment.

Grimshaw waited, pencil at the ready.

Then Jon Figg said, ‘We run.'

Grimshaw snapped shut the notebook and stuffed it back into his pocket, then lodged his pencil behind his ear. He frowned at a small dirt demon that had climbed on to his back paw – probably generated by the grime gathering where the sink unit met the floor. Such things were the lowest form of Avatar and Grimshaw was glad the stupid creatures only hung around the properly alive (and the mess they created) and couldn't exist in Limbo. He brushed it off irritably and looked at his chronometer. He had things to do and it was time to be getting on and doing them.

A curse demon's chronometer could take the shape of anything from an hourglass to an armillary sphere. Originally, when Grimshaw had come into existence over a hundred and fifty years ago, his chronometer had appeared as a pocket watch. So, because he had been born without clothing and had no pockets to put it in, his first task had been to find a pair of trousers. Later, to keep up with the times, Grimshaw had thrown away the chain and had strapped the watch to his wrist with
a leather strip. He kept the trousers because he liked them, although, after a century and a half of wear, they were more darn than trouser.

As well as the time and the geography, Grimshaw's chronometer also read the constellations and the seasons, including human holidays like Christmas, Easter and so on. In addition to that, it highlighted special events on the Spirit calendar, like various approaching catastrophes (earthquakes, tsunamis, vast floods or landslides and the like), or the births and deaths of religions.

Right now, Grimshaw set the geography hands to outside number thirty-three, Whitefield Drive, under the rhododendron bushes. Then he pressed the send button. Then he disappeared from the kitchen.

Outside the house, life was going on as normal. The sun was shining and there was a light breeze to cool the air and rustle the leaves. Grimshaw thought it made a nice change from Grey Space. He was well positioned on the other side of the road so that he could see the front door of Marsha's house and the view up and down the avenue (slightly obscured by a pink rhododendron flower, but not so that it was a problem).

Grimshaw studied the page in his notebook dedicated to Jon Figg, the Man Who Helped. By now there were ticks through dog, car, house, job and wife and the page was covered in notes. He reviewed the ones relating to last night, when Jon Figg's wife Emily had died
in hospital. He frowned. He had written, ‘
Miserable Collapse with Despair and Sobbing
', but somehow, thinking back, that didn't seem quite fair. After a brief inner struggle, Grimshaw crossed the comment through and replaced it with, ‘
Heartfelt Collapse and Dignified Weeping
', then got on with the job in hand.

He scratched an ear and turned his inky gaze up the road, to where a small boy was kicking a ball around a front garden. The boy's mother had told him to play in the back garden, but he had decided to ignore her because he had been made to eat porridge for breakfast instead of chocolate krispies and was in a rebellious mood.

Next, Grimshaw looked the other way, to where a couple of men had pulled up in a truck. They got out and began unloading equipment.

Whitefield Drive was a pleasant avenue, lined with tall houses and trimmed with leafy trees that cast cool shadows in the bright sun. Mostly this was a good thing, but every few years the trees grew too large and the council sent out some men with a truck, some yellow tape and a couple of electric saws to cut off a lot of branches and thin the trees out. This was one of those years.

Grimshaw watched with interest as they fixed up their safety equipment outside Marsha's house, calling cheerfully to each other as they worked. The boy in the nearby front garden kicked his ball about more
slowly as he spared some attention to see what they were doing. When the safety harness was in place, two of the men shouldered the electric saws, hopped on to the mechanical ladder on the back of the truck and rose swiftly to the leafy heights where they clambered into position. A second later the morning was split by the grinding whine of the saws and the cracking of branches.

Being a creature born of spirit rather than flesh, Grimshaw was able to see a little way into the future. It was a very complicated place. Humans had free will, and so, although there was a
most likely
course for them to take, they might change their minds and do something different instead. So each human's future was actually several possible futures running alongside each other. When a person made his or her choice about what to do next, then the several futures melded together into a single present. As their decision might affect everybody else's possible futures, it could be difficult to get a forecast exactly right.

Opening his inner eye, the one that could look forward in time, Grimshaw investigated the various futures that spanned out over the next few hours. Jon Figg left the house at around 10.30, just as a youth on a motorcycle sped down the road and disappeared around the corner. The men chopped branches until 1.00, when they stopped for lunch. The boy got bored and went in some time between 10.45 and 11.30. If he stayed out until the later time, his mother called to him from the
window. There wasn't a lot of variation, apart from the time the kid got bored.

Flipping his ears, Grimshaw pulled off his backpack. Then he fished out an old school ruler and a battered copy of
How to Be a Dutiful Housewife
by Eliza Minchin and set to work. He had taken Mrs Minchin from the bookshelf of his first ever Sufferer to use as a prompt. The way it worked was this. First he held up the book and dropped it so that it fell open at random. Then he picked up the ruler and placed it anywhere on the page. Next, he looked along the line made by the ruler and wrote down the first words that caught his eye. Then he did it all again.

After a few goes he had written down a string of haphazard phrases. They said:

… silver, knives for example …

… always chop the vegetables into small pieces …

… look for materials that …

… the stone should be scraped free of …

Then he closed his actual eyes, opened his inner eye and looked again. This time he saw:

Falling knives chop into small pieces. Look at the stone.

He grinned, showing a row of small, yellowish stumpy teeth. He returned the book and his ruler to his backpack, stuffed his notebook into his pocket, then went to look for the stone as suggested by Eliza Minchin.

He found it very quickly, and when he found it he changed its position by one centimetre to the north and
three to the west. It took experimentation to get the right place, moving it a little, checking the most likely futures, moving it a little more, checking again and so on, but eventually he found the right spot.

Then he went back to the rhododendrons.

Fish couldn't believe it when the curse demon fiddled with the oversized watch on its wrist and disappeared. Especially as it vanished right about the time that Jon was telling them about the cottage on the moors.

‘Nothing for miles but empty heath. If you can get lost anywhere, then it's in Crow's Cottage! Time itself would pass you by in that place. My parents liked to go there when they felt life was rushing by too fast. When my father died he left the place to me, but what with one thing and another, Emily …' he paused for a moment, his face twisting briefly, ‘… and I haven't been up there for a couple of years.'

‘And you think we might be safe there?'

‘If you can be safe anywhere. It's been deserted for a while so it will be in a state, but we can clean it up and stay there for as long as we need to.'

Susan glanced at Fish, who nodded. ‘It's worth a try, Jon,' she said. ‘Besides, what have we got to lose? If what you say is true, then every moment that passes, our lives are in danger here. We might be under this horrible threat wherever we go, but then again, we might outrun it.'

‘We can take Reg's van,' said Marsha. ‘Load it up with as much food, clothing and bedding as we can and off we go. Won't take long. We can be on the road by this afternoon.' She clasped her hands together and her cheeks looked flushed with determination. ‘Don't worry, dears, we'll manage somehow.'

Susan smiled. ‘I have to say, Marsha, you are coping with this far better than I would have thought.'

Marsha shrugged and sent a glance at Fish, the memory of his stern glance yesterday afternoon suddenly fresh in her mind. ‘I think I finally woke up, Susan. This is really happening. I've lost my beloved Reg, and the only family I have left in the world, the people I care about, are in danger. If living in a fallen-down cottage at the end of the world will save us, then my best china, my chandeliers and my upholstery can go hang!'

Jon smiled at her, the first real smile Fish had seen from him. ‘That's the spirit! Now, I'll give you the address and the keys. Here, I've already drawn you a map.'

Fish reached out, took the map from his hand and began to study it.

‘Aren't you coming with us?' asked Marsha.

‘Not till I've seen Emily decently buried. If I survive that long, I'll follow you, OK? And if I'm not there in a week … well, you'll know it's got me.'