The Alchemy Press Book of Urban Mythic 2 Read online

  Steve became aware of sounds from outside. Sirens screaming, coming closer.

  The window of his main room looked down on the street. He saw red and blue flashing outside, heard slamming doors and running feet. The gun on the table grew in his vision. They knew he had it. They were coming for him. He snatched it up and raced into his bedroom, opened the window and threw it out. Rapidly, he stripped off his clothes and clambered under the sheets. He could pretend he was asleep. Then he remembered that the sitting room light was on. He dashed in and clicked it off, hoping no-one had looked up and seen it go out.

  Steve huddled under the blanket. Stray thoughts churning through his mind. He could hear muffled sounds coming from downstairs and a child beginning to cry. It occurred to him that raids were done stealthily without the advertising sirens. They’d be chasing someone. He’d better keep his head down. He pulled a pillow over it. Then he remembered he’d picked up the gun. His fingerprints would be on it. A bright white light passed over his window. They would be searching for it. They’d find it directly below his bedroom. They’d come for him.

  He’d been expecting it, but the knock on the door still surprised him. He staggered out of the bed almost tripping over the sheet. He’d better open it. It would look suspicious if he didn’t. He didn’t want them breaking it down.

  He didn’t bother checking who it was, just undid the locks and yanked it open. A policeman in a stab jacket stood on the threshold. It was the same one who has arrested him on the bus. ‘We believe there is a felon hiding in these premises,’ he said. ‘We would like your permission to check your flat.’

  Steve held the door open, conscious that he was barefoot and dressed only in boxer shorts. ‘Yeah. Come and look.’

  The cop came in followed by his female side-kick. He looked in all the rooms while she stood in the sitting room. She noticed the blanket on the table. ‘Is this yours?’ she asked.

  Steve shook his head. ‘I think it belongs to Lily-Anne downstairs.’

  The cop picked it up and sniffed it. ‘Why have you got it?’ she asked.

  Steve fudged the truth. ‘I found it in the passage when I got home for work.’

  ‘So why didn’t you return it to her?’

  ‘She’s just gone out. I held the door open so she could get the pram out.’

  ‘What time was that?’

  Steve thought. ‘About nine. Maybe quarter past.’

  ‘Didn’t you think it was strange she was taking a baby out at that time?’

  He shrugged. ‘It’s not my business.’

  The male cop came back in. Steve wondered how much of his things he had gone through. He wasn’t going to object, even if they didn’t have a warrant. There was nothing in his flat he wanted to hide and he didn’t want to be carted off to the station for being obstructive. The WPC held out the blanket to her colleague. ‘Its got oil on it,’ she said.

  ‘Bag it. There’s no-one else here.’

  He had to say that for the record, Steve supposed.

  ‘We might be back for a statement,’ the cop said as they left.

  Steve closed and locked the door again. He leaned his back against it, his legs shaking. He had no idea what was going on but lights were still flashing at the front and white light from torches were reflected into his bedroom window. They would find the gun he was sure. He couldn’t imagine why Lily-Anne would think he could hide it.

  He crawled back into bed, pulled the blankets over his head and lay curled and unsleeping for the rest of the night, trying to keep the sounds and lights from outside out of his head. By morning his eyes felt gritty and his body lethargic. He opened the fridge to find the only milk he had was on the turn and all was left of his loaf was a couple of crusts. The newsagents opened early.

  Steve pulled on yesterday’s clothes and headed down the stairs. A uniformed copper was standing at the bottom of the stairs, stationed outside Lily-Anne’s door. Steve ignored him. He thrust his hands in his pockets against the air’s chill and kept his head hunched down into his collar as he walked directly away from the entrance. He didn’t dare look round even though he desperately wanted to go round the other side and see if the gun was lying under his window. A foolish thought. If it was visible it would have been found. If not, he would only attract attention to it.

  On his return, there was a police van sitting quietly outside, the kind that carried dogs. He held his curiosity in check and supposed they’d found nothing with the night-time search. Despite having watched him leave, Steve had to persuade the officer on duty in the lobby to let him go up to his flat. He wanted to ask if baby Rhianna was okay but didn’t dare. Showing too much interest might make them suspect he was somehow involved.

  In the evening when he returned from work there was no sign of the cops. The van and the guard were gone. From the front, Lily-Anne’s flat was dark. No-one at home. It was almost as if the night’s excitement hadn’t happened. He wasn’t going looking for the gun though. You never knew who was watching. The woman walking her dog, the street sweeper picking up litter, the man clipping his hedge on the other side of the road; any one of them could be staking the place out.

  It wasn’t until Sunday after the inevitable lunch with his mother, that Steve dared to walk around the other side of the block. He stayed on the path and looked up to his bedroom window, tracking the path an object would have taken if tossed out. Beneath it was a scrag of bushes in a border bedraggled in its winter plumage; plants with tough, evergreen leaves to withstand balls and bikes crashing into them and never anything other than dull.

  Steve stepped off the path, his eye drawn by what was probably a plastic bag caught in the under-branches. The muddy grass and the earth of the borders showed the imprints of boots. He didn’t usually bother about litter but this time it seemed right to gather it. He crouched down to reach under the bush. His fingers encountered the velvety stickiness of cobweb. He drew his hand away. The web stretched. He didn’t remember having seen a mass like this before though he thought he had heard about it – a nest to protect spiderlings. It seemed the wrong time of year.

  Curious, and because he liked the feel of web on his skin, he pushed his hand into the mass – and froze. The tips of his fingers encountered something hard, metallic. Steve suppressed a squeal as he withdrew the gun. Rapidly he thrust it into a pocket. He glanced around, hoping that no-one had seen. Then he walked away as rapidly as he dared. He couldn’t leave it there. It had his fingerprints on it, more-so now. His one thought was to get rid of it. Was it luck that the gun had fallen into the mass of old web? That the cops had assumed that there was nothing in the centre?

  Steve could feel the weight of the metal in his pocket as he walked. He was sure it was pulling his coat out of shape, that it was obvious to anyone that he was carrying. He got on the first bus that came along, not bothering to go upstairs this time. He held his coat close and stared out of the window. In the city centre, he headed for the canal. The towpath was almost deserted, joggers and cyclists having given up for the day.

  He stared all around him, thinking how conspicuous he must look, before taking the gun from his pocket and dropping it into the water.

  *

  He hadn’t wanted to go straight back home, in case someone had seen him crouching in the flowerbed. The longer he stayed away the more likely the memory was to fade. When he reached his grandmother’s he found her surrounded by toys and books and other small items. She was muttering to herself

  ‘What are you doing, Grandma?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s Christmas in six weeks. I have to decide what to give everyone. It’s not easy. You all grow up too quickly.’

  Steve picked up a couple of the picture books. He still had his scruffy copy of The Very Hungry Caterpillar somewhere at home. He flicked through one of the others. It was an animal story with cartoon pictures.

  Grandma said, ‘I’ll keep that one here. Read it to your nieces when they visit.’

  Steve looked at it more clos
ely. It was an Anansi story. The deer fleeing from a veldt fire carried the spider to safety. Later the spider repaid the favour by spinning webs to hide the deer’s faun from hunters.

  ‘As you’re here, boy, you can help me. Brush them cobwebs away from the corners up there where I can’t reach.’

  ‘Do you think that’s a good idea, grandma?’ Steve said.

  The old woman grinned at him. ‘Don’t you worry, boy. I’ve already given the spiders notice.’

  Steve glanced out of the window. The now familiar dreadlocked ancient saluted him as he sauntered past.

  The West Dulwich Horror

  By Carl Barker

  Somebody famous once said that art is the only way to run away without leaving home. Elise found that funny. Peering from the crust of trees at the rear of the property, she watched Belair House intently through a sparse curtain of fronds and felt the irony of those words cling to her like oil on a canvas. What was it, she wondered, about old buildings and secluded locales that so often married together? Perhaps the one sought out the other during long moonless nights; deserted mansions scampering across London on willowy legs, their overly bristled feet creaking dryly in the wind as they went in search of dank hollows.

  The mansion was a monolithic blackness silhouetted against the amber pallet of a fading Monet sunset. Its cold shadow unnerved her. Even when the house had still been a pub, it had possessed an odd sense of eccentric imperium, but now that the new owner had seen fit to vastly expand the faux Georgian architecture of the East and West wings, the house had acquired a deeper sense of foreboding and unquiet dread. Nervously fingering the jemmy stashed in the folds of her parka, Elise reminded herself that it wasn’t really a crime to break into a place if you didn’t intend to steal anything. She stamped her feet stubbornly against the cold and blew breath on her hands. Though leaves still held court on surrounding trees, the ground crunched noisily underfoot. She wished she’d brought gloves.

  For her it was the principle of the thing. When Mags had mentioned offhandedly over lager tops in The Vic that their old drinking haunt was now privately owned by a publisher of rare books, a familiar anarchic longing had begun deep in Elise’s gut and nagged at her for the rest of the day. Now, as she peered out at the house from the growing dark of the woods, she knew the only way to sate that longing was by going inside.

  ‘Not bad, Pyg’ she muttered. ‘Back less than a week and you’re already breaking and entering. I’m sure Spring-Heeled Jack would approve.’

  An owl hooted riotously nearby and Elise resisted the urge to hoot back. Having left her spray-cans behind, she pulled out a penknife and began carving on a nearby tree, whittling a tiny representation of Spring-Heeled Jack into the bark. It was the same image she always created, no matter the medium, but something about the notorious nineteenth century bogeyman’s face etched into wood gave him an almost regal quality, that familiar chiselled jaw reminiscent of a nobleman’s portrait; the king of her heart. Elise carved a frame round the vignette and thought back to her morning sabbatical.

  *

  The gallery had been quiet for a weekend. Forlornly attempting to lose herself amongst the forest of Old Masters festooning scarlet-clad walls, Elise was reminded that there was nothing for her in Dulwich. It was just a place. As good as any other she supposed, if it weren’t for the memories.

  Mum had died when she was terribly young and though Dad had done his best to raise her the Christian way, he’d slipped more than once from the high pedestal she’d placed him upon. He slipped an awful long way in fact, but those were the memories that she buried the deepest.

  Most people returned to what they saw as home to visit family and friends, but as she no longer had any of the former, and had amassed very few of the latter, it was the Picture Gallery that had brought her back; that and Spring-Heeled Jack of course.

  The ‘Baroque The Streets’ festival had started a couple of years back. An open invitation to the world’s most renowned graffiti artists, to descend upon Dulwich en masse and participate in the creation of a vast outdoor gallery of street murals; each piece representing its creator’s unique interpretation of one of the Gallery’s classical works. For most of those artists it was a chance to introduce their work to an alternative audience and perhaps add a little primordial zest to an otherwise staid corner of middle-class London. For Elise it was a chance to put her well-worn bag of aerosols to good use in defacing a number of ugly childhood memories and perhaps, if she was lucky, completely paint over her past.

  She disliked the word ‘graffiti’, despite it suiting her anti-establishment stance. She preferred the term ‘street art’ as a more melodious counterpoint between the mundane and aesthetics. Fiercely devoted to her vocation Elise still retained a love of the more traditional forms and had made a beeline for the Gallery at the start of the day.

  She wove her way amongst the patrons to the far end of the Gallery, where the British portraits were housed; her stud-laden knee boots and matted dreadlocks drawing the occasional sneer as she went.

  In one particular corner hung a tall and entirely sombre painting by Reynolds that never failed to secure her attention. An obtuse-looking piece, all tannin and drapes and suffused with a thick air of hauteur in the ‘grand style’, which lent it a certain melancholic charm. It was the painting’s subject though that continually gathered her eye. According to the guide book, Sarah Siddons had been the most renowned tragedienne actress of her day and, as if in confirmation of this, Reynolds had idealised her in the role of Melpomene; one of the nine daughters of Zeus, and Greek muse of both song and tragedy. Elise eyed the twin figures of Terror and Pity swathed in shadow behind her and felt an odd sort of kinship.

  Her mother’s death had seemed somehow detached from reality, like something one only read of in books; yet the wound it had rent upon her childhood psyche had never really healed. Whilst she mercifully discovered the catharsis of art in her early teens, her father had found the bottom of a whiskey bottle; drinking himself into a stupor each night and becoming more of a fiend.

  Having stood entranced for some considerable time, Elise turned to retrace her steps. It was then that she noticed the man watching her from the shadows: a middle-aged wraith in a raincoat with a face like cut glass, thinning silver hair drawn tight across his head in a style that had gone out of fashion long before she was born. Their eyes met briefly as he emerged from the Reni exhibit and crossed under the skylight. Returning his gaze to the paintings, he squinted awkwardly at each one with all the enthusiasm of a myopic bookworm, the sunlight clearly hurting his eyes. Noting the expensive shoes and tailored cut of his suit, Elise surmised that he was probably a collector of some sort, and paid him no further heed; until he sidled up next to her in front of Dobson’s portrait of Richard Lovelace.

  ‘Stone walls do not a prison make,’ he muttered, peering at the brushwork. ‘Nor iron bars a cage.’

  Elise regarded his unhealthy pallor with an air of distrust. ‘’Scuse me?’ she blurted.

  The man cocked his head at the Dobson.

  ‘I was referring to our Cavalier poet here’s most famous of songs,’ he chided. ‘I take it you’ve never read Althea, my dear?’

  The brief glimpse of dirty uneven teeth afforded by his smile turned her stomach and she scowled in return.

  ‘I prefer pictures myself.’

  Ignoring her rudeness, he continued.

  ‘You really should, you know. Young people always make the mistake of underestimating the power of words.’

  His old man condescension bugged her a little and she thought of telling him so.

  ‘Whatever.’ Stomping across the room, she was dismayed to see him doggedly follow in her stead and she made a point of not looking at him as they stood together before Raphael’s Transfiguration.

  ‘Magnificent, isn’t it?’ announced her unwanted companion. ‘His last painting you know.’

  Elise made a face like a dog licking piss off a nettle. ‘Bit preachy for
my taste,’ she grumbled. ‘Christ up there above everyone else, like he’s somehow better than us.’

  The man in the raincoat gave an all-knowing smile.

  ‘Take away Man’s Christian God and his Saints and he will worship something else in its place.’

  Having taken a clear dislike to him, Elise treated him to another withering stare of incomprehension.

  ‘Just something my grandfather used to say,’ he explained, drawing the belt of his raincoat tighter, as though the hazy warmth of the interior had no effect on him.

  ‘Bit of a weirdo as well was he?’ she muttered.

  Ignoring the jibe, her mackintosh-clad chaperone took hold of her hands, ensnaring them within long clammy fingers which snaked out from the folds of his coat like synchronised eels.

  ‘Forgive me for not introducing myself.’ He smiled wanly, no real life in his eyes. ‘I’m Howard Phillips.’

  The skin of his palm was odd, like that of a doll, and Elise suppressed a shudder.

  ‘Pyg,’ she replied stiffly.

  Those dead eyes widened a little in astonishment. ‘I beg your pardon?’ he said.

  ‘That’s my name,’ she sniffed, enjoying the look of consternation on his face. ‘It’s short for Pygmalion.’

  ‘I see,’ Phillips said, withdrawing his hands and slowly digesting her answer. ‘Well, whilst I’m all in favour of plundering the rich mythology of the ancient world for more imaginative forenames, do I detect that your parents were somewhat lackadaisical in their adherence to gender?’

  ‘It’s not my real name’ Elise snorted, unimpressed by his prosaic speech. ‘It’s my artistic name. You know? Nom de brosse an’ all that.’