by Robert Wilde
Now We Can’t Sleep At Night
By Robert Wilde
Book Two of Dead Speak Book
Contents
One: After You
Two: Clear
Three: Open Up
Four: History
Five: Sex Yeah?
Six: Right Hand Free
Seven: The One You Were Waiting For
Eight: The Mona Lisa of Ghost Shagging
Nine: Sleeper
Ten: Hate
Eleven: Serial Killers Can Be Quite Antisocial Really
Twelve: Press Ganged
Thanks to Sarah Sharp.
Cover by The Cover Collection.
One: After You
“Will you clarify what you did in the previous year? I know you have a note in your curriculum vitae, but quite frankly one line doesn’t explain anything, and quite frankly I’m struggling to see how this happened.”
Dulcimer Nettleship had been watching the man’s skull face bark out the words, and ‘quite frankly’ she was having an out of body experience where her mind was watching her sitting in the sterile interview room while three men in expensive suits sat and judged, while her heart was leaping over the table and strangling them with their ties.
“I formed a group of private investigators. We combined my journalistic research skills, my friend’s computer knowledge, and the input of two technical experts.” She was proud of this, oh so proud of that glorious year, and she was going to have to kill one of these fucktrolls for slagging it off wasn’t she.
“And what did you and your ‘experts’ investigate?”
Dee decided he said experts more sneeringly than when he introduced her as a female applicant and she knew she would piss on him if he was on fire because it would be fun. And he’d still be on fire. “Cheating husbands?” He added, picturing her as the sort of woman who tried to test adulterous husbands.
“Murders.” She let it hang, and smiled at their open mouths.
“Did, err, you, err, say murders?”
“Yes. People kill for sex and money mostly.”
“Oh.”
“There’s the odd one who killed because their cats told them too.” Okay, she’d lost the room with that one, no one ever believed that.
“Did you, err, solve any of these murders?”
“We had a very good record, lots of cases closed.”
“I, err, see,” and he began to get control of himself. “We can check this in the paper?”
“Some, our police work is confidential.”
“Confidential?” Slowly back to sneering.
“I can’t tell you more, but I’m sure you appreciate discretion.” Did she still want this job? Because she seemed to still be sat there trying to get it.
“If you were so successful why stop? Why come to our newspaper?”
“I, well,” she paused, staring into the distance, coming back only when the committee coughed, oddly as one. “One of the team was killed. Gave his life to save others.”
“But if you were so successful…” They were ignoring that were they? Not caring what Joe did, what no one can ever know for ‘security’ reasons? That was his epitaph, a quick move past the heroism and on into why his friends gave too much of a shit to resume their old lives.
“It was like the Scooby Gang,” she spat, “if the dog had been shot.” The room now paused, unsure of whether this was a real joke, or whether Dee was about to douse them in petrol and light a cigarette off their burning faces.
“I see.” Stay formal, stay starchy. “Are you not feeling too emotional to work for us?”
“It’s been two months, I really feel I’m ready for work.”
“But that’s only two months.”
“How long do you give people whose parents die?” It’s not two months is it you fucks.
“I see.” He wrote something onto her CV. On to the actual CV sat in front of him, in a green pen, so he was clearly a serial killer. “Do you have a partner?”
“There were four of us…”
“No,” he said with far too much relish, “I mean a husband. Or wife.”
“Is that relevant?” Now her heart had hung them out of the window by their little fucking ties.
“It can be. Do you?”
“Right, of course, I could so sue your sexist arses off for asking that.”
“Do you feel threatening to sue prospective employer’s helps your prospects?”
“Right, fuck you skull face,” she stood, jabbing her finger, “fuck you fat bastard, and fuck you staring at my tits for the whole time, take your job and fuck it till your cocks are shredded.”
She wrenched the door open hard and stormed through before it slammed back shut behind her.
“She’s got timing,” fat bastard noted.
Her phone took this chance to ring. “Dee Fucking Nettleship, still unemployed, considering escort work. Who’s this?”
“It’s me,” said an oddly synthesised voice, “how did the interview go?”
“Oh, sorry, the Array, you’ve got a new number?”
“I’m not supposed to call you. But this number will stabilise, I thought I ought to have a normal line.”
“Good, I’ll put your name in. By normal do you mean people can listen in?”
“You’d need a special phone for people not listening in. Do you want a special phone?”
“I have enough trouble with this one. How did you know about the interview?”
“You don’t sound happy.”
“When I am queen those fuckers will be first in the shark tank.”
“Shark tank?”
“Sharks are awesome. I have my own shark week.”
“Oh. You’d like to be queen?”
“Who wouldn’t. As long as I didn’t have to be a princess.”
“I see. I have never considered being one.”
“Err… not sure you’d fit the dresses.”
“Having no body can be frustrating. Although I suppose I should be proud of what I do have and work with that.”
“A load of brains in jars?”
“Yes.”
“Yeah, you work it girl. And stop monitoring so much trashy television. Did you want anything?”
“I was checking how you were doing. And doing.”
“Oh, right. We’re all still feeling shit. Pohl is even thinking of going back to lecturing, she must be verging on suicidal.”
“Maybe you should check on that.”
“It’s a joke. Yunno, jokes.”
“I see.”
“You have brains, you must get jokes. You’re not a shit fifties sci-fi character.”
“I appreciate humour, I just worry about you and your group. If I didn’t get jokes I’d have taken the prostitute one seriously.”
“That’s sweet.”
“Thanks.”
“Right, how fast can you read job hunting websites?”
“Very fast.”
“Good, I have a task for you…”
Two detectives stood on the riverbank, looking a little downstream and sipping coffee. They were watching a small boat which had driven to what tourist information would like to call an island, but the detectives called a shitty lump of shit, and they kept sipping as a specialist officer, dressed for falling in the water, leant over and pulled a body up and out of the river and onto the boat. The view was now obscured by the sides, but soon the puller stood up, turned to the river bank and shouted “he’s dead.”
“As he’s just spent the last twenty minutes face down in a fast moving
river,” one detective noted to the other, “he’s dead is the best result. If he was alive we’d have to explain the Creature from the Black Lagoon to the DCI.”
“One day we’ll discover a zombie apocalypse, and we’ll actually be thankful the paperwork fucking stopped.”
“I guess we better go see where he jumped in.”
“Nice day, let’s walk. We might find something.”
“I doubt he got out of the river for a breather.”
The detectives turned and walked back up the riverside. The rural surroundings began to be punctuated with brick, before they entered a largely urban part of the city. Soon a bridge across the river towered above them, as they came to the part where river met stone.
“You think he’d jump off the fucking bridge,” one said, looking up. “That’s what I’d do.”
“Well get on with it then, I quite fancy your wife.”
A uniformed constable came dashing round the end of the bridge and down to them. “Sorry, sorry, taking statements, lots of people with nothing so say.”
“As ever. Right, and this,” a detective pointed at a pair of shoes and a pile which included a coat, trousers and a briefcase, “is what he left when he jumped in?”
“I don’t have anyone who saw him jump, or leave his stuff, but we do have someone who heard a loud splash, ran off, and saw the man being swept downstream.”
“Right. So we can’t rule out ‘idiot who tried to save a puppy’.”
“Oh, there is the note.”
“The note?”
“Yes, we have it bagged, thought it best taken away from the water.”
“No puppy. Does it say why he jumped?”
“No specifics.”
“So, bloke dumps his stuff, leaves a suicide note, jumps in the river. Seems pretty easy. But,” and the man turned, “what the fuck is that?”
All three men were looking at the graffiti on the wall. A mixture of black and white on grey stone, it didn’t look like much of anything. Vaguely like a large circle with other circles in it.
“Looks fresh, and we have two spraycans on the ground.”
“Reckon he did that before he jumped?”
“With any luck Banksy just topped himself, doing society a favour.”
“My son loves Banksy.”
“Your son needs to cut his hair and get a job.”
“I put up with him if it means I keep fucking my wife.”
Nazir looked up and concluded he hated plastic sheeting. Okay, it was very fancy, with colours and shapes, but ultimately it was plastic sheeting and it had failed him utterly. Sitting at a stall on the high street was great when it was sunny, and it had been sunny all right, but when the British weather shat rain upon you market tradition demanded you stay put and ride it out, which meant hoping the plastic sheeting above, behind and beside you keep the rain out. Today it had decided to spring a leak, not over the equipment he used, which in any event had a second layer of plastic protection, but over his head. It was like god not only existed, but was into pretty acts of spite.
Nazir had just finished an attempt to duct tape the hole shut, and now settled back to sitting waiting for customers. He’d been doing technical support for two months now, which mostly meant changing phone batteries or jailbreaking the devices, but he offered a fully confidential laptop repair service where he’d take your equipment back to his flat and fix it, and he’d noticed his profits rise once he’d added the ‘confidential’ to the sign. Good old humanity, sickening perverts to the last. But he was confidential, because no one ever knew what was on those laptops, apart from the owner and he who had a good snoop around, because the only way to stop temptation is to give into it. And maybe copy the best stuff to a hard drive you hid in the floorboards.
Still, it was raining, no one was around, so he looked at his own laptop which was running under a clear plastic cowl, a digital Darth Vader. He had a program running which searched news sites and pulled out any interesting articles about the activity of alien life in the universe, and most importantly, closer to home, so there was always a handy magazine for him to browse through.
He’d discovered two key points. Firstly, only a few people really knew there were aliens in the galaxy, and that they’d been on earth. Secondly, none of these people used the internet, which was instead filled with a cavalcade of idiots outdoing each other with more bullshit than the entire bovine and human population of Texas produced in a year.
He looked up as a shadow fell across him, and found a stocky woman in her forties braving the rain.
“Hi, technical support, how may I help you?”
“I don’t have anything electronic that needs fixing.”
“Oh, okay, directions?”
“But I do have something that needs fixing.”
“Oh, well, that’s flattering, but I’m gay.”
“No, well, yes, but no, I need some help with my brother.”
“He’s gay?”
“Who knows, he killed himself. I heard you used to be a private detective?”
“Yes, yes I did.”
“Then can I hire you? And your group?”
“Err… did you say he killed himself?”
Nazir walked up the path to Dee’s house, and noticed she still hadn’t done any gardening. She’d never been too hot with a fork at the best of times, but her house was rapidly disappearing between the love children of the Triffids and Little Shop of Horrors. Still, he managed to fight to the front door, only slightly worried by the cat staring at him from the wilds, and decided how best to approach this.
Dee and the Professor had been able to ignore the presence of aliens in the world, to have failed to correlate the contents of their minds and to move forward halfway between not giving a shit and viewing the whole episode alongside unicorns and councils filling potholes. Nazir, on the other hand, had filled a room with every book and magazine on aliens he could find and was still working his way through the stalagmites. So how to interest them in trying to solve a mystery.
Dee opened the door a minute later, wearing her smartest suit, and Nazir could tell from the way it was crumpled and the way she was holding a cocktail in a can that she didn’t expect to get the job.
“Hi, I’ve bought lunch.”
“Ooh, come in, come in,” Dee said, and Nazir moved through with a large bag. This was placed on the kitchen table, Dee stuck her head into the lounge to call Pohl, and soon all were in the kitchen.
“I’ve bought us a party bag from the new Mexican place in town.”
“Party in the USA.”
“A little more south.”
“Tell that to border control. So, what have you…” She realised Nazir had stopped himself from taking anything out. “What?”
“I was approached today by a lady needing help,” he explained.
“Did you turn it off and back on again?”
“Her brother killed himself, and she wants us to find out why.”
“Did you tell her we were retired?” Dee already knew where this was going.
“No, in fact I said I’d speak to you both about investigating.”
“Nope, and onto the food.”
“The food is staying in the bag until we’ve discussed this.”
“We just discussed it, I said no.”
“I realise you blame yourself for Joe’s death, we all do, but we were good at it.”
“Were good at it, things are very different now.”
“Okay, we’re a man and a machine down, but do you really want to go back to writing about missing dogs for a newspaper?”
“People love their dogs.”
“And you hate those people. So, do you want a Mexican feast followed by a trip to a crime scene, or do you want to sit on your sofa despising the world and watching antiques programmes.”
“There is nothing wrong with knowing all the prices of Clarice Cliff.”
“Food or wallowing?”
Dee felt her stomach rumble, looked at
the cocktail in her hand, and over to Pohl, who nodded. “Oh fuck it, get the meal out.”
Dee turned her car off the bridge via a crossroads at the far end, so she was driving parallel with the river, and found a space because this was a week day and everyone shopping had rushed home to unpack and feel guilty.
“Is this the bridge?”
“That’s the puppy.”
Dee, Nazir and Pohl got out and walked down the bank to the path by the river.
“It looks fast flowing,” Pohl noted.
“It is,” Dee confirmed, “there’s always some drunken idiot who thinks he can jump into it and swim to shore, and they’re always drowning.”
“And we’re sure this isn’t, as you put it, a drunken idiot?”
“Yep,” Nazir now noted, “guy left a suicide note.”
“But did he write it?”
“That is something for us to conclude.
“So is this the place?” Dee asked as they stopped just below the bridge.
“Yep, the shitty graffiti marks the spot.”
“So, the official story…”
“Right, it’s he comes down the bank, partially undresses, sprays that picture, and then jumps into the river. Makes no attempt to swim, and is pulled downstream, to be rescued half an hour later died as a Hamas – Israeli peace deal.”
“Okay, okay,” and Dee looked around. “So, no one saw him strip or jump, right?”
“Right.”
“But they all saw him in the water?”
“Right.”
“And the police have this note, which doesn’t give any reasons.”
“Right. Just says goodbye to his sister.”
“And what have you discovered so far?”
“No financial worries, successful businessman, no partners, a fixture on the local dating scene.”
“Good, good, and this all forces me to conclude, Nazir, that we don’t have a fucking clue either why he jumped or what we’re supposed to do next, and all we do know you were told by a relative.”
“Hang on, you said you’d come and investigate.”
“I did, and I have. But what are we really Nazir? We got where we did because we could speak to the dead. And if we had the machine, we could find and ask his ghost. But we’re back to being regular fuckups now, and we have nothing.”
