Bradley rapped on the door for the second time. “Glenn Jackson?” he called, “This is the police. Open up!”
The door was a nasty sort of Seventies green, and as dingy as everything else in what I’m going to be charitable and call the rooming house. I was mildly surprised the door was still standing; it didn’t look like it would hold up to a harsh word, let alone sustained knocking. And yet, there it was.
And there we were. My eyes had adjusted to the crappy lighting in the windowless upstairs hallway. It was a hall that, like the house it bisected and, I suspected, most of the residents, had seen better days.
A hundred or so years ago, this had been a new and well-appointed house in an upscale neighbourhood. But times change, and upscale can go downhill pretty quickly. Now, the only hint of former glory was what looked like the original baseboards, miraculously intact.
The place smelled. Like mold, and the kind of food you have to cook quickly because you’re really not supposed to have that hotplate.
This wasn’t just poverty. This was down, out and just barely hanging on to “down and out”. This was being just one bad day away from the street. This wasn’t the kind of place where you suddenly come into a suitcase full of money.
I’d mentioned this – not, you understand, in so many words – to Bradley on our way up the stairs. He had shrugged, which now appeared to be his default response to anything I said that he couldn’t or didn’t want to argue with.
Then we’d arrived at Jackson’s door and the knocking had started.
Bradley raised his hand to knock a third time, then stopped himself.
He listened. So did I.
There were people around, on this floor of the house – sitting quietly in their run-down rooms, I suspected. Hoping that whatever Glenn had done to bring the cops down on his head twice in one day wasn’t going to stick to them. Praying, when they couldn’t stay still and their floorboards creaked, that we’d think it was just random old-house noises and leave them alone.
I wished we could oblige. But if Jackson didn’t open his door, we were going to need to figure out where the hell he was, and that might mean shaking someone down for a list of his usual places.
Anyway, none of the noises I was hearing were coming from Glenn Jackson’s room.
“Time to check in with the neighbours,” I said quietly.
Bradley shook his head, “If he’s half as drunk as the uniform I sent over here said, he’s here. He’s just dead to the world.”
Then he pounded the door so hard that clouds of dust drifted up from the jamb. “Jackson,” Bradley boomed, “Police. Get. Up and. Open. The. Door.”
I looked up and down the hall. This part of town was close enough to the Border with Fairyland that nobody would live here if they didn’t have to – and, I guessed, even the people who did have to live here were careful as spurk if they had to go anywhere after dark.
They were careful in other ways, too. On every door up and down the hallway were the little wards that the old folk wisdom had passed down. An iron horseshoe over one door; a little bell – it looked like it had once been a child’s toy – over another. A piece of toast hung from a string on a third; that one was kind of a longshot, really, but you do what you can. Regardless, everyone living here had done something to safeguard themselves from the Fair Folk.
Except one. There was nothing at all above Glenn Jackson’s door to keep the fairies at bay. Not even a piece of toast.
