Free Lockwood by Jonathan Stroud Page A

last red light drained away across the endless ranks of headstones.
    Saunders gave a bellow of renewed rage. ‘All right, you cowards! Joplin can put you on another sector tonight! Far away from that grave! Satisfied? Now get out of our way – go on, shift!’ Grasping Lockwood by the arm, he shouldered his way inside the building. George and I followed, bumped and buffeted, squeezing through the closing doors. ‘And no severance pay!’ Saunders yelled through the crack. ‘You all still work for me!’ The doors slammed shut, silencing the clamour of the crowd.
    ‘What a palaver,’ Saunders growled. ‘It’s my mistake for trying to speed things up. I got the excavators to begin work digging around the Bickerstaff grave an hour ago. Thought it would help you out. Then all hell broke loose, and it wasn’t even dark.’ He took his hat off and wiped his sleeve across his forehead. ‘Perhaps we’ll get a moment’s peace in here.’
    The chapel was a small, plainly decorated space with walls of whitewashed plaster. There was a smell of damp; and also a persistent underlying chill, which three glowing gas heaters ranged across the flagstone floor did little to remove. Two cheap-looking desks, each piled high with a mess of papers, sat near the heaters. Along one wall a dusty altar stood behind a wooden rail, with a small closed door beside it, and a wooden pulpit close at hand. Above our heads rose a scalloped plaster dome.
    The most curious object in the room was a great block of black stone, the size and shape of a closed sarcophagus; it rested on a rectangular metal plate set into the floor below the altar rail. I studied it with interest.
    ‘Yes, that’s a catafalque, girlie,’ Saunders said. ‘An old Victorian lift for transporting coffins to the catacombs below. Uses a hydraulic mechanism. Still works, according to Joplin; they were using it until the Problem got too bad. Where is Joplin, anyhow? Damned fool’s never at his desk. He’s always wandering off when you want him.’
    ‘This “small incident” at the Bickerstaff grave . . .’ Lockwood prompted. ‘Please tell us what’s happened.’
    Saunders rolled his eyes. ‘Heaven only knows. I can’t get any sense out of them. Some of the Sensitives saw something, as you heard. Some say it was very tall, others that it wore a cloak or robe. But there’s no consistency. One night-watch kid said it had seven heads. Ridiculous! I sent
her
home.’
    ‘Night-watchers don’t normally make up stories,’ George said.
    This was true. Most children with strong psychic abilities become agents, but if you’re not quite good enough for that, you swallow your pride and join the night watch. It’s dangerous, low-paid work, mostly taking guard duties after dark, but those kids are talented enough. We never underestimate them.
    Lockwood had his hands in the pockets of his long dark coat. His eyes glinted with excitement. ‘It’s all getting curiouser and curiouser,’ he said. ‘Mr Saunders, what’s the current state of the grave? Is it exposed?’
    ‘The men dug some way down. I believe they struck the coffin.’
    ‘Excellent. We can deal with it now. George here is good with a spade – aren’t you, George?’
    ‘Well, I certainly get plenty of practice,’ George said.
    The path to the unexpected grave of Edmund Bickerstaff lay along a narrow side-aisle just beyond the excavators’ camp. Saunders led us there in silence. No one else from the camp followed; they hung back in the circle of light beneath the arc lamps, watching us go.
    The burials in this part of the cemetery were modest ones – mostly marked by headstones, crosses, or simple statues. It was dark overhead now. The stones, half hidden by thorns and long wet grass, showed white and stark under the moon; but their shadows were black slots into which a man might fall.
    After a few minutes of walking, Saunders slowed. Up ahead, piles of brambles marked where a patch of ground had been