Free Edie Investigates by Nick Harkaway

their droves. Dotty, aged, and absent-minded, they file through his doors clutching little pieces of broken memory: music boxes, clocks, fob watches and mechanical toys they once played with or inherited from their mothers, uncles and spouses, now gone to dust and ash.
    Edie Banister offers him some more coffee. Joe declines. They smile at one another, nervously. They’re flirting; the elephant in the room—apart from Bastion’s unremarked grip on Joe’s nether parts—is a laburnum-wood box about the size of a portable record player, inlaid with paler wood around the edges. It is the reason for this latest visit to Edie Banister’s home, the reason he has locked up early and come out to Hendon, with its endless rows of almost-pretty, boring housesdecorated in little-old-lady chic. Coquettish, she has drawn him here repeatedly and disappointed him, with bits of spavined gramophone and an unlikely steampunkish Teasmade. They have played out a species of seduction, in which she has offered her secrets day by day and he has responded with quick, strong hands and elegant solutions to the intractable problems of broken machinery. All the while, he has known she was testing him for something, weighing him up. Somewhere in this tiny set of rooms there is something much more interesting, something which sweet, ancient Edie clearly believes is going to knock his socks off, but which she is not quite ready to reveal.
    He trusts devoutly that what she has in mind is clockwork rather than flesh.
    She wets her lips, not with her tongue, but by turning them briefly inward and rubbing them together. Edie Banister comes from a time when ladies were not really supposed to admit to having tongues at all; mouths and saliva and the oral cavity proposed the possibility of other damp, fleshy places which were absolutely not to be thought of, most particularly by anybody who had one.
    Joe reaches down to the box. Touches the wood. Lifts it, weighs the burden in his hands. He can feel … 
moment
. A thing of importance. This sweet, dotty old bird has something stupendous, and she knows it. She’s been leading up to showing it to him. He wonders if today’s the day.
    He opens the box. A Golgotha of armatures and sprockets. In his mind, he assembles them quickly: that’s the spine, yes, the main spring goes here, that’s part of the housing and so is that … dearie me. Much of this is just so much dross, extra gears and the like. Very untidy. But all together, the useful parts … Oh! Yes, good: early twentieth century by the style and materials, but quite refined in its making. An artisan piece, a one-off, and they always get more, especially if you can link them to a known craftsman. All the same, it’s not … well. Not what he was expecting, though he has no idea what that was.
    Joe laughs, but quietly, so as not to waken the canine volcano burbling between his thighs.
    “This is very fine. You realise it could be worth quite a bit of money?”
    “Oh, dear,” Edie Banister says. “Do I need to insure it?”
    “Well, perhaps. These automata can go for a few thousand on agood day.” He nods decisively. On a bad day, they can sit like a dead fish on the auctioneer’s pallet, but never mind that for now.
    “Can you fix it?” Edie Banister says, and Joe brushes aside his disappointment and tells her that of course, yes, he can.
    “Now?” she asks, and yes, again, because he has his kit, never leaves home without it. Soft-arm clamp to hold the housing. Another as a third hand. Tensioners. There’s no damage, actually, it looks as if someone took it apart on purpose. Quite carefully.
Snickersnack
, as it were, the thing is assembled, except … hmph. There’s a bit missing—ain’t it always so? It would crosslink the legs … hah! With a piece like that, this would have a veritable walking motion, almost human. Very impressive, very much ahead of its time. He’s seen a robot on the television which works the same