What do we remember when people have gone? As I put together the next edition of our Occult Detective magazine, a mad concept which started as a joke between the late Sam Gafford and myself, I like to recall the idiocy of it all – and the pointless humour Sam and I shared, just for the pleasure of it. What follows is one of those – it’s not so much funny, as typical of how we were, and keeps him around in my mind…
Sam and I came together through William Hope Hodgson, and through my fondness for Thomas Merton Carnacki, WHH’s fictional ghost finder (who rarely encountered any actual ghosts, but did meet monsters). In 2015, when Sam was thinking of putting together a second Carnacki anthology, he went for a classic theme – cases mentioned in WHH’s original works, but never explained. Very Sherlock Holmes, Dr Watson and ‘The Giant Rat of Sumatra’.
Being what I am, I said, “Yeah, I could do some of those.” I don’t think Sam had read anything of mine at that point, but we’d made a connection. So I wrote two new stories, ‘The Dark Trade’ and ‘The Grey Dog’, for him. The first was genuine Carnacki pastiche, with tragic twists; the second was a unusual meditation on the truths of life, by Carnacki himself. That second one was very personal to me.
Which is all very Yeah, so what? However, because it was Sam, I also wrote one much shorter story for him as a laugh, and that was never intended to go anywhere. I was to be the anonymous British dealer in WHH curios, and he was the Yank who sought them. In real life, Sam loved finding new WHH stuff, and we would get excited when things turned up.
That story was called ‘The Meeting’, and it’s dreadful, of course, because it’s a two line joke spun out for over 600 words. But maybe it tells you something about how Sam Gafford and I got on, because – to my genuine surprise – he actually used it as the first story in Carnacki: The Lost Cases…
THE MEETING
john Linwood Grant
The Star and Garter was a somewhat decrepit public house, tucked into an alleyway near the City. Two brokers stood by the open doors, arguing over a half-finished bottle of merlot, oblivious to the tourists on the street. Inside, a couple stared into their glasses, drained of conversation by their years together. At the bar a young woman poked angrily at her mobile phone. The barman polished the hand-pumps and stared down unashamedly at the girl’s bare legs.
I ordered a single malt, and slid into one of the alcoves to the rear. When Gafford arrived, barely ten minutes later, he was easy to spot. No-one looks more clandestine than a man trying to seem casual.
I watched the large American ease his way past the brokers, blinking as he adjusted after the sunlight outside. He glanced at the bar, then saw me in the gloom. I beckoned him over.
“Mr Gafford,” I said, not rising to greet him.
“Yes.” He eased himself into the alcove. “And you are…”
“The supplier.”
“Yes, yes, of course.” He cleared his throat. “You do have what I want?”
I didn’t bother to reply.
“Uh… of course you do. It was a long flight, you know. Cramped, lots of shrieking kids on the plane…”
I raised one hand to interrupt his nervous flow.
“This is a professional transaction, Mr Gafford. Is the transfer ready to go ahead?”
He reached into his coat, a quite inappropriate heavy gaberdine considering the late summer heat in London at the time. Drawing out his mobile, he squinted at it.
“As soon as I send the go ahead to my bankers.” His fingers slid across the screen. “It’s all in place.”
“Then we are in business.”
I pushed my whisky to one side.
“I tracked down the items in question to a private house on the Embankment. I obtained entry last week, under the pretence of checking the roof timbers for beetle infestation, and there, in the attic…”
I enjoyed the moment. I was, after all, very good at my job. Gafford swallowed, looked around as if others might be listening. The brokers had left, and the woman, a slim brunette, was still at the bar, her attention now on the barman. An Aussie, I suspected, bronzed and far too friendly to be a Londoner.
“You have them… here? With you?” The American wiped his damp palms on his coat.
I smiled, and from under the table I lifted out two cracked leather valises, the clasps corroded but still serviceable. I had checked. A century in a dry, dusty attic had fortunately done little harm.
He took one of them from me, placing it in front of him. He turned it over a few times, peered inside, and frowned.
“But this… this is empty.”
“The contents were irrelevant to our deal,” I said. “Mouldering shirt-collars, hair brushes and so forth.”
He placed the valise down, hands shaking. “What kind of a limey con is this? You expect me to pay $10,000 for some old luggage?”
“I procured exactly what was specified in our communications. The carriers, Geo. Phillips and Son, you see, had gone to 422 Cheyne Walk, not 472. An easy mistake, given the handwritten labels used in those days.”
And with some pride I pointed to the clear TMC engraved on the brass clasp of the nearest valise.
“I have found them, Mr Gafford, just as you requested. These are indeed…”
I waited a moment. Gafford looked at me with a kind of horror, like a man whose soul has brushed the Outer Circles, and yet even as he stared at the two leather valises, he could not stop himself from finishing my sentence.
“Carnacki’s lost cases.”
Odd people, the Americans. Sometimes you just can’t please them.
Miss you, Sam. You would have got the title of this post in a millisecond…
