The clack of decent boots announces him long before the shadow of he and his burden slide across the brick alley. The usual denizens pay him no mind, having seen bodies wrapped in cloth up and down this ginnel on the shoulders of men many days and nights before, these being the type to acquaint the cobbles with their cheeks often enough and not being the type the wash off the accumulated grime left by such skulking lives. Down here the sediment of the city’s sin swells to critical mass and the nearness of the tall buildings threaten to clog with the foul heaviness of it. This is as low as it gets, there is nowhere else for evil to drain, dark deeds seeded at the eyrie of the strata, with the high nobility, trickles down through their hidden masters, the bankers and the merchants, into all other facets of this clanking machine - the smith, the baker, the candlestick maker - right down into the dregs, where, were it not for men like he, it would have stuck, swollen and risen right back into the faces of those that made it.
Today is not a day for such lofty, ill-paid, endeavours. Today he visits Sid Black. He hauls the heavy load past the chiming door and dumps it in on Sid’s counter.
Sid eyes him over his glasses, ‘Good day to you. What’s this?’
‘A corpse.’
‘Ah. Whose?’
‘Mine now. But it did belong to a mate of mine, Albert Caulker.’
‘Right,’ Sid undoes a wrap across the face, as if to verify the man he does not know. As if it matters to him. What matters is his business with corpses, and Sid has an old habit of feigning any understanding what that is.
Sid gestures to the shelves of thick-glassed vials and fat bottles, layered with rust coloured stains of various chemical runoffs and filled with an array of dull, bloodish liquids, as well as the wrapped bundles of dried herbs, small dead animals and tainted brass apparatus. ‘I’m afraid there isn’t much I can do for them, after they’ve passed.’
He doesn’t have time nor humour for Sid’s coyness today. So he just looks at him, knuckles on the counter by the corpse of Albert Caulker.
‘Very well,’ says Sid. ‘How long do you need?’
‘How long does it take a man to recall where he put something?’
Sid shrugs. ‘An hour.’
‘An hour, then.’
Sid scratches the corner of his mouth, looking at Albert Caulker. ‘Best I can do is fifteen minutes.’
‘Then why ask?’
Sid doesn’t deign to answer. ‘It’s expensive.’
‘How much?’
Sid Black’s small eyes dart all over his person. How much is this one worth, eh? How much that jacket, to tan and tailor? Where’d he get decent boots like that? His is of low or gentle blood, not noble, that is clear, but is he in the pocket of a duke, or the employ of a lawyer? Does he deal in coin or credit?
‘Sixty.’
‘Silver?’
‘Gold.’
He lets no expression pass over his face. ‘Fine.’
And now he sees Sid’s face fall, where it should be beaming, knowing he should have pushed for more. He hands over the coin and watches Sid, slowly, count out each one, chewing his regret with each low clank as he passes them into a strongbox.
‘Am I better waiting for rapture, so Caulker can come back and talk to me of his own accord?’
‘Fine,’ says Sid, scooping the rest of the coin away. ‘Put him in there.’
He does. A room that might have been white, once. There is more black between the tiles than grout. A single table and above it, a monstrous tangle of machinery and loose, flaccid tubes ending in brass needles the size of his hand. It makes him think of a giant spider, looming hungry over the three of them; he, Sid Black and Albert Caulker.
He watches with passive interests as Sid unwraps Caulker and leaves the corpse naked on the table. Then he takes the tubes and inserts their needle-heads into various parts of the body - the crook of the elbows, the inner thighs, the chest, the sides and last, a small tube in the temple, all slotting into place with a sucking crunch, as if they were always supposed to be there.
Sid walks over to a handle, mounted on the wall. ‘Ready?’
He just looks at him.
‘Fine.’ Sid pulls the handle. A thick gurgling fills the room and the spider shudders. The tubes grow turgid and Albert Caulker goes inflates a little, as if it were possible for him to go any more rigid. After a moment of spasming, being filled with - whatever it is Sid fills them with - and then Albert Caulker opens his eyes and screams.
He stands. ‘Oh, quiet yourself.’
The corpse, Albert, glares at him with fevered, wild eyes. ‘Where am I?’
‘A doctor’s office,’ he glances at Sid. ‘You had a bad fall.’ He avoids looking at the various, gaping stab wounds in his chest, courtesy of whoever murdered him.
‘Oh, mercy, I can’t feel my legs.’
‘That’s just the shock of it, right doctor?’
Sid raises his brows. ‘Indeed it is.’
‘You’re fine, Albert.’
‘What happened?’ Albert tries to look around, but the needle in his temple makes it hard for his head to move. ‘What is all this?’
‘Medicine,’ he says. ‘Now, Albert, I need you to focus. There is something you must remember for me and it is very important, do you understand?’
‘Am I going to die?’
‘Albert.’
‘Yes?’
He leans down, so that his face is close to Albert’s. ‘Where did you put my shears?’
‘What?’ says Albert.
‘My gardening shears, Albert. Think back, where did you leave them?’
The corpse stares at him for a moment, then his eyes look up as he considers. ‘Well, I think I put them in the pantry.’
‘The pantry? You’re sure?’
‘Well, yes. As sure as I can be. Oh, I really can’t feel my legs. Will I walk again? What kind of fall?’
He leans up and nods to Sid. ‘That is all.’
Sid blinks. ‘That is all?’
He nods.
Sid says, between Albert’s mutterings, ‘You have time left. You are sure?’
‘I am sure Albert here is telling the truth of it,’ he pats the ranting corpse on the chest. ‘We are done.’
Albert tries to get a better look at the pair of them, ‘We are done? I may take leave to go home?’
Sid tilts his head, very well. He pulls the handle and Albert’s ranting and motion cease altogether.
Sid is looking at him.
‘What?’
‘You aren’t curious as to who might have done for him? Or why?’
He yawns. ‘Knowing Albert, he probably had it coming.’
‘Unbelievable,’ says Sid Black.
‘I know,’ says he, ‘why would he leave shears in the pantry?’
Paddy Dobson
22nd January 2021