Lockwood Read Online Free PDF Page B

scruffiness, sharp tongue and fondness for bottom-hugging puffa jackets, this was obviously a matter for regret. But he was still a tireless researcher, capable of unearthing vital facts about each and every haunted location. He was the most careful of us too, the least likely to jump headlong into danger; this quality had kept us all alive more than once. George also retained his habit of taking off his glasses and polishing them on his jumper whenever he was (a) utterly sure of himself, (b) irritated, or (c) bored rigid by my company, which, one way or another, seemed pretty much all the time. But he and I were getting along better now. In fact, we’d only had one full-on, foot-stamping, saucepan-hurling row that month, which was itself some kind of record.
    George was very interested in the science and philosophy of Visitors: he wanted to understand their nature, and the reasons for their return. To this end he conducted a series of experiments on our collection of spectral Sources – old bones or other fragments that retained some ghostly charge. This hobby of his was sometimes a little annoying. I’d lost track of the times I’d tripped over electricity cables clamped to some relic, or been startled by a severed limb while rummaging in the deep freeze for fish fingers and frozen peas.
    But at least George
had
hobbies (comic books and cooking were two of the others). Anthony Lockwood was quite another matter. He had few interests outside his work. On our rare days off, he would lie late in bed, riffling through the newspapers, or re-reading tattered novels from the shelves about the house. At last he’d fling them aside, do some moody rapier practice, then begin preparing for our next assignment. Little else seemed to interest him.
    He never discussed old cases. Something propelled him ever onwards. At times an almost obsessive quality to his energy could be glimpsed beneath the urbane exterior. But he never gave a clue as to what drove him, and I was forced to develop my own speculations.
    Outwardly he was just as energetic and mercurial as ever, passionate and restless, a continual inspiration. He still wore his hair dashingly swept back, still had a fondness for too-tight suits; was just as courteous to me as he’d been the day we met. But he also remained – and I had become increasingly aware of this fact the longer I observed him – ever so slightly detached: from the ghosts we discovered, from the clients we took on, perhaps even (though I didn’t find this easy to admit) from his colleagues, George and me.
    The clearest evidence of this lay in the personal details we each revealed. It had taken me months to summon up the courage, but in the end I’d told them both a good deal about my childhood, my unhappy experiences in my first apprenticeship, and the reasons I’d had for leaving home. George too was full of stories – which I seldom listened to – mostly about his upbringing in north London. It had been unexcitingly normal; his family was well-balanced and no one seemed to have died or disappeared. He’d even once introduced us to his mother, a small, plump, smiley woman who had called Lockwood ‘ducks’, me ‘darling’, and given us all a homemade cake. But Lockwood? No. He rarely spoke about himself, and certainly
never
about his past or his family. After a year of living with him in his childhood home I still knew nothing about his parents at all.
    This was particularly frustrating because the whole of 35 Portland Row was filled to overflowing with their artefacts and heirlooms, their books and furniture. The walls of the living room and stairwell were covered with strange objects: masks, weapons, and what seemed to be ghost-hunting equipment from far-off cultures. It seemed obvious that Lockwood’s parents had been researchers or collectors of some kind, with a special interest in lands beyond Europe. But where they were (or, more likely, what had happened to them), Lockwood never said.