Where The Bee Sucks Read online

  ***

  Hank Brownlow was tempted, at the seventh level, to abandon the stairs and summon an elevator. He took off his jacket, aware of the dark patches spreading under the pits of his shirt sleeves. Time for a quick breather. Couldn’t hurt, could it?

  He strolled across the floor past offices and meeting rooms to the inviting fresh air of a rooftop garden that afforded panoramic views of the city for miles around. Gulping in the breeze, Brownlow kept away from the edge. He was okay with vertigo as long as he didn’t do anything silly like look over the handrail and the huge expanse of nothing but air between him and the pavements far, far below.

  People were idling around, most of them with cameras, taking pictures of the views and the building itself. It wasn’t to Brownlow’s taste; he preferred something more Florentine and centuries older than this newfangled accretion of squares and circles. The older buildings gave you more in terms of backup for the craziest notions. There were always statues and works of art, foundation stones, inscriptions, that you could build a story around. Even a battered old gargoyle, its features worn away by centuries of rain, could be roped in to support a hypothesis. But this place was too new, too bare. He doubted it would feature at all in his new show. Squares and circles. The levels were squares - cubes, in fact, stacked high, like boxes, like Christmas presents. The circles bedecked the outer walls, overlapping to create ornate patterns in the metalwork. Circles and squares...

  Some of the amateur photographers were pointing their lenses and fingers up at a higher level. Brownlow followed their lead to see what was attracting their attention. On an upper level, there was a figure standing near the guard rail.

  A figure in tweed.

  Banner!

  Brownlow raced through the garden and back indoors. There was a glass elevator, like something from a storybook. He slapped at the arrow-shaped button to summon it and then noticed it didn’t go up as far as the ninth level. With a growl, Brownlow abandoned that means of ascension and hurried back to the stairwell. He couldn’t believe such a doddery old man had beaten him to the staff.

  He tore along the corridor, shoving against the walls, to find the Shakespeare Memorial Room open and ransacked. Every door of every cabinet was open. Contents had spilled out all over the floor. Drawers were open, some of them pulled right out and cast across the room. A young woman was kneeling, her throat impaled on broken glass in a display case. Blood was pooling around her knees and spreading across the carpet, making its redness glossy.

  Brownlow hesitated. The girl - an attendant, judging by her clothes - was already dead. It would make no odds to let her sit for another few minutes. He noticed, among the destruction, the books and precious papers strewn everywhere, that the carpet bore the same pattern of overlapping circles as the exterior of the building.

  Circles and squares...

  Galvanised, he left the room. The deck outside was empty; Banner had moved on. Brownlow pressed his hands and face against the plate glass of the window.

  Why had Banner killed the girl? Why had he pulled the place apart when she was evidently ready to show him what he was after?

  Brownlow plunged down the stairs, ricocheting between the walls and the handrail. He dashed out into the rooftop garden and forced himself to look over the edge, expecting to see the professor’s tiny figure tearing away from the building. Brownlow moved around the perimeter of the viewing deck, keeping both hands on the rail and trying not to ignore the dizzying nausea that was weakening his stomach and legs.

  He turned a corner and was faced with the rooftop of the neighbouring theatre. He wondered if anyone - even an elderly man - could drop from the library to the lower roof next door and get away... And, if so, would an out-of-condition TV presenter be able to overcome his acrophobia and follow in his footsteps?

  Fortunately for Brownlow, he didn’t have to find out. At the next corner there was a commotion. One security guard was trying to keep back a group of photographers and sightseers while another was at the safety rail on top of which the old man was standing, the grey Birmingham sky his backdrop.

  Brownlow was amazed; the old guy was standing as easily as if he were at a bus stop. The perilous height clearly meant nothing to him. His trousers flapped against his legs. The breeze buffeted his snowy comb-over. How straight he is standing, Brownlow marvelled, considering his advanced age and where he was standing.

  Banner’s back was to the spectators. He looked out across the city with an alert expression. Somewhere out there was the piece of the staff. He tasted the wind as if he could read it in some clue to the missing piece’s whereabouts.

  “Listen, man; nothing’s worth that,” the security man was saying. “Life’s too short to end it before your time.”

  He considered the obvious age and decrepitude of the old man on the guard rail and thought perhaps he wasn’t being altogether tactful. Perhaps the old chap was a widower, or was riddled with some painful and terminal disease. Perhaps he was just demented. The guard would wish none of these fates on anyone. He tried another tack. “Come inside, yeah? We’ll get a cup of tea and talk about it, yeah? On me.”

  The old man didn’t move. The wind was gaining strength. The security man was worried the poor bloke would be blown from his perch like a piece of litter. He didn’t look strong, like he weighed much... The security man decided to go against his training. One quick yank of those trousers and he could pull the old fool backwards and secure him...

  Slowly, very slowly, the security guard reached up a hand.

  “No!” Brownlow cried rushing forwards. Banner turned; the security guard snatched at the tweed trousers. Banner’s eyes met the TV presenter’s. Then he sprang from the rail and out into the open air. He seemed to soar, borne by a current, out and up in a graceful arc. Everyone watched in fascinated horror. For a moment it seemed as though the crazy old man would rise like an untethered kite or a helium balloon but then gravity reasserted itself and down he plummeted. The security guard and Brownlow hurried to the edge.

  There was no sign of the old man’s body. He had landed in the amphitheatre, a circular pit that brought light to the library’s lower level, so they were spared the gruesome spectacle of the splatter of his innards over a wide area.

  “Circles...” Brownlow muttered. At his elbow, the security man smirked.

  The transfer had been successful; he now had a younger, fitter body in which to seek the missing piece of the staff.

  From below rose the sound of approaching sirens before they were drowned out by the library’s fire alarm. Staff began to evacuate the building. Within minutes the place was empty but somehow Brownlow managed to linger behind. Someone recognised him from his bestselling books - always popular in the lending library - and he told the first cops to arrive he was a material witness.

  “Glad you stuck around,” said a gruff detective with Cornish pasty crumbs on his shirt and tie. “Our friends in Oxford have told us all about you.”

  “That’s peachy,” said Brownlow but was unsure whether this put him in or out of the clear.

  “The pizza in the piazza,” the detective jerked his head towards the handrail. “You followed him to Brum?”

  “To what?”

  “Here. Birmingham. If it wasn’t for the dozen or so witnesses, I might be led to believe you chucked him over the edge.”

  “And why would I want to do that?”

  The detective pursed his lips. There was a trace of tomato sauce at the corner of his mouth. “For what he did to your secretary. Strange business, that.”

  Brownlow threw up his hands. “Oh, come off it!”

  “Relax, Mr Brownlow; like I say, there’s over a dozen witnesses. You didn’t touch him.”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

  “So why did you follow him, Mr Brownlow? Will you answer me that?”
r />   They were in the corridor outside the Shakespeare Memorial Room, which was now barricaded with yellow tape. Flashes of cameras were going off like a lightning storm inside the room. Scene-of-crime officers were to-ing and fro-ing in white plastic bodysuits.

  “I wanted to ask him some questions,” Brownlow tried to sound nonchalant. “For a TV show I’m putting together.”

  The detective nodded. He had seen some of Brownlow’s work and there was always a copy of one of his books in the toilet back at base.

  “I’ll just put research.” He scribbled in a notepad and then thought of something else. “What are you researching?”

  Brownlow smiled - a sentimental smile and placed a hand on the relief portrait of Shakespeare on the wall outside the Memorial Room door. He stroked the playwright’s wooden cheek. “There is more to this man that we realise,” he said, as though introducing his programme.

  “And who’s that, then?” The detective’s pencil was poised.

  Brownlow was dumbstruck. “Are you kidding me?”

  The detective grinned, revealing front teeth that were clogged with bits of salad. “British sense of humour, mate,” he said. “You’d better get used to it.”

  Nine.

  Harry made the final adjustments to his costume. He had not the advantage of the resources available to Olly but, he reckoned as he appraised himself in the mirror, he hadn’t done too bad a job with the make-up. Pallor was the key word; to look pale and wan without turning oneself into a stick of chalk. Harry had added dark circles to his eyes and shadowing to his cheeks. I look like Death warmed up, he grinned at his reflection. The white make-up made his teeth appear yellower than they actually were. He reached for a little bottle and applied some tooth-black to counter this effect.

  His hair was stuck up with Vaseline and he was careful not to squash it down too much with his tattered top hat. The hat was a prop as well as an accessory. He would doff it and use it to usher his customers from location to location and he would hold it out for tips at the end. This was against company policy but what Mary didn’t know wouldn’t enrage her. Americans were the best for tipping, shedding five-pound notes like dead skin wherever they went. Harry saluted himself in the mirror and hoped for Americans - lots of Americans - in his party.

  The walk to the meeting point helped him to get into role. His tailcoat and black leggings marked him out from the crowd but the make-up operated like a mask. He leered at any gawkers and snarled at their children. Somehow he would be less noticeable when he was leading a group of ghost enthusiasts; people were used to touristy things going on all the time, he figured.

  The sun was setting although it may as well have phoned in its appearance for all the good it had done that day. There was a chill in the air and that was to Harry’s advantage. People were easier to scare when they were shivering to begin with.

  The idea was to walk them around a couple of blocks, pointing out a few sites where terrible things had happened - many of the original buildings were still standing, although they now had the gaudy and illuminated faces of shop windows - then to return them to the museum, reputedly in the most haunted house in England, where on-site tricks and scares awaited them. Harry would hand the group over to his colleagues who were waiting to pounce from dark alcoves and behind tapestries.

  Cheap thrills but at least it made a change from the wall-to-wall Shakespeare kitsch, Harry mused. But he couldn’t stop himself sending a look of longing to the theatre complex. He had turned down bar work in the building - to be so close to the stage and not allowed to perform on it was too much like torture and too strong a reminder of his failure. Living with Olly was bad enough and Olly was only a lowly understudy.

  No; that was unfair to Olly. Olly was a lowly understudy at the most prestigious theatre company in the world. That was a big deal, Harry acknowledged. He fought down resentment at his friend’s career and waited for the group to assemble, clapping his fingerless gloves together to keep the blood flowing in his fingers.

  In twos and threes they trickled towards him, bearing till receipts before them like talismans to show they had paid their money and were ready to take their chances.

  “Say, is this the spot for the ghost walk?” said a big fellow in a Hawaiian shirt and Bermuda shorts. Harry tried not to grin and show he was pleased to see him. An American! With his wife and teenage daughter. There would be tips tonight!

  Eleven enthusiasts gathered. Harry took off his hat and bowed low. He stared at them in turn, holding them in silence, before greeting them in his best (i.e. not very good) Boris Karloff impression. “Ladies and gentlemen, boys and ghouls. This is your last chance to walk away.” He paused. No one moved. “Good. Don’t say I did not warn you. I bid you, follow me.”

  He stalked away on the balls of his feet to the corner of Sheep Street where he waited for them to catch up.

  “This street is teeming with spirits,” he gestured up the thoroughfare behind him.

  “Sheep spirits!” the American barked. “Buddy, we ain’t come all this way to hear about sheep.” Beside him, his wife nodded; the daughter, to her credit, looked embarrassed. “In fact, the only animals I’m interested in are in my dinner - and I’m not bothered about whether they’re actually dead! Am I right?”

  He appealed to the rest of the group for support. Most people were looking at their shoes with pained expressions. A couple appealed to their guide with their eyes, imploring Harry to do something to rid them of the obnoxious American.

  Harry arched an eyebrow, thickened with black greasepaint.

  “The sheep,” he began, “that give the street its name, because they were brought here to market, are actually accountable for more deaths in the town than you might expect. For it is in the wool on their backs that the fleas travelled, the very fleas that carried the bubonic plague. So I wouldn’t think too lightly of the humble sheep. Sir.”

  The American’s lip curled. Before he could retort, Harry moved on. The American received a bash on the arm with a folded map from his wife and a grimace of contempt from his daughter.

  Harry came to a stop and the group shuffled against each other before forming a more ordered semi-circle in front of him.

  “On this spot,” Harry pointed at a doorstep, worn away by centuries of feet, “a young girl met her end. She -”

  He stopped.

  His heart skipped as he realised he hadn’t a clue what to say next. He frowned at the doorstep but it was as unforgiving as the faces of his tourists. His mind raced... the young girl... This was the place about the young girl, wasn’t it? Or was that further up?

  Sweat broke out beneath his make-up but he couldn’t wipe it away without smearing his face.

  Eyes wide, he froze. The judgmental expressions of his customers were like headlights, pinning him in place before he was crushed under their wheels...

  “What young girl?” the American said what they were all thinking. “Spit it out, son.”

  Harry whimpered. It was all going awry. He was supposed to terrify them not the other way around.

  “The young girl...” he intoned, remembering the Karloff cadence, “had a mother of whom it was said she was a witch. The mother, not the young girl.” Snatches of the story were coming back to him and he struggled to verbalise them in something like a coherent order. “But the locals couldn’t get her to confess - the mother, I mean - so they turned on her - the young girl. And they did all sorts of terrible things to her.”

  “Oh yeah? Like what?”

  “Sir, they burned her feet. But the girl said she didn’t know a thing. They burned her hands but she still could tell them nothing. In the end, they opened up her belly and showed her her own guts. By then, of course, it was too late for her to tell them anything. And it is said that if you look up at that window over yonder,” he pointed vaguely across the road, “ you can
catch sight of her playing. With her guts hanging out, of course.”

  The party turned their heads to look.

  “Say, which window am I meant to be looking at?” the American bellowed. But when he turned around, the guide was already moving up the street.

  The group shuffled after Harry who was waiting in an archway. A sign on the archway said No Parking At Any Time. Harry tried to stand in front of it in order to preserve the period look.

  “As we have established, the street is named for all the sheep that came to town. And where there’s sheep, there’s butchers. And where there’s butchers, there’s knives. And knives have to be sharpened, ladies and gentlemen. Knives have to be sharpened.” This bit was flowing more readily, Harry was relieved to find. It was just nerves, he told himself; I just needed to get into my stride.

  “In the Middle Ages, there was a man called John Davies who used to travel the area, sharpening knives. Knives for the butchers, knives for the big houses - for anyone who would pay the fee. Knives he sharpened for others, but for himself he kept the blade of an axe as sharp as sharp could be. And with that axe, he would chop up women and children wherever he roamed. And they didn’t catch him because he was always on the move. It is said he still walks this very street with his axe in a sack. You might glimpse him, following women and children. Or you might become aware of him standing behind you because the stench of his breath is the foulest of smells.”

  He paused to let the story sink in. Even the American seemed to be thinking about it.

  “Say,” his brow furrowed, “how do you know he was called John Davies if they didn’t catch him?”

  Harry frowned back. He had no clue. He was only repeating what he had been told. He expected the American to bully him for an answer but was surprised to see the big man’s expression change. In fact, all the faces standing around Harry were changing. A couple pointed trembling fingers above Harry’s head. Others clamped hands over their own mouths.

  “Say...” the American gasped, “How are you doing that?”