Lockwood by Jonathan Stroud

with a toothy grin. ‘Exactly, girlie! A bad business. But this is the way the Problem is going. New Visitors appearing all the time. That Stepney grave was three hundred years old. Had it caused trouble before? No! But afterwards they discovered that the person in that grave had been murdered all that time ago, and of course
those
are the spirits most likely to become restless, as we know – murder victims, suicides and so on. So government policy now is to monitor all cemeteries, and that’s what Sweet Dreams Excavation and Clearance is doing up at Kensal Green.’
    ‘It’s a massive cemetery,’ George said. ‘How many graves are you digging up?’
    Saunders scratched the bristles on his chin. ‘A few plots each day. Trick is to weed out the ones that are likely to give us trouble. We do the assessment work after dark, as that’s when psychic emanations are strongest. We’ve got night teams pinpointing suspect graves. They mark ’em with yellow paint. Next morning we dig ’em up and remove the bones.’
    ‘Sounds dangerous, the night work,’ Lockwood said. ‘Who’s on that team?’
    ‘Bunch of night-watch kids, some freelance Sensitives. A few adult males to keep the relic-men at bay. They get well paid. Mostly it’s just small-time stuff: Shades, Lurkers, other Type Ones. Type Twos are rare. Anything
really
iffy, we hire agents in advance.’
    Lockwood frowned. ‘But how
can
you assess this danger in advance? I don’t understand.’
    ‘Ah,
that’s
down to Joplin here.’ Mr Saunders dug his companion roughly in the ribs with a bony elbow. The little man gave a start, and dropped half his documents on the floor; Saunders glared impatiently as he scrabbled to retrieve them. ‘He’s invaluable, Albert is, when we can find him . . . Well, go on, then. Tell ’em what you do.’
    Mr Albert Joplin straightened and blinked at us amiably. He was younger than Saunders – early forties, I guessed – but equally dishevelled. His curly brown hair hadn’t seen a comb in weeks, perhaps years. He had a pleasant, rather weak face: round and ruddy in the cheeks, and tapering to an undershot jaw. His apologetic, smiling eyes were framed by a pair of small round glasses, not dissimilar to George’s. He wore a crumpled linen jacket, rather dusted with dandruff, a checked shirt, and a pair of dark slacks that were ever so slightly too short for him. He sat stoop-shouldered, hands drawn protectively over his papers in the manner of a shy and studious dormouse.
    ‘I’m the project’s archivist,’ he said. ‘I provide assistance to the operation.’
    Lockwood nodded encouragingly. ‘I see. In what way?’
    ‘Digging!’ Mr Saunders cried, before Joplin could continue. ‘He’s the best excavator in the business, aren’t you, Albert, eh?’ He reached over and squeezed one of the small man’s puny biceps in theatrical fashion, then winked at us again. ‘You wouldn’t think so, to look at him, would you? But I’m serious. Thing is, though, while the rest of us dig for bones, Joplin here digs for
stories
. Well, come on, man, don’t just
sit
there like a melon. Fill them in.’
    ‘Yes, well . . .’ Joplin, flustered, adjusted his spectacles nervously. ‘I’m a scholar, really. I look through the historical burial records and cross-reference them with old newspaper reports to find what you might call the really “risky” interments: you know, people who came to nasty or tragic ends. I then alert Mr Saunders, and he takes whatever action he thinks necessary.’
    ‘Usually we clear the grave without problems,’ Saunders said. ‘But not always.’
    The scholar nodded. ‘Yes. We were working in Maida Vale Cemetery two months ago. I’d pinpointed the grave of an Edwardian murder victim – all overgrown, it was; the stone had been quite forgotten. One of those night-watch boys was busy clearing the brambles away, getting it ready for the digging, when up popped the ghost, right out of the ground,