by Robert Wilde
“Indeed.”
“We can’t let anyone else live there, we can’t.”
“Can we get one of those seizure devices, that can grab souls?”
“Do we want more ‘Array steals stuff and we have to sort it all out’ adventures? Because I suspect we don’t.”
“No. But, what if we can turn it into a disabled soldier’s recovery home.”
“That’s not funny Naz.”
“I’m not joking Dee. Maybe we buy it and rent it to a charity or something? We can afford the place, we take it off the market, we make sure only ex-military go inside. One useful, working building, plus income stream for us.”
“We did just earn a lot of money…” Joe said.
“I really like that idea,” Theo confirmed.
“We’ll be in a planning nightmare for years.”
“Maybe Dee, maybe, but one that’s worth it. What else is there, buy it and leave it empty? Someone’ll squat before the year is up and they’ll all die.”
“I hate to say this Nazir, I really hate to say this, but that’s actually not a half bad idea.”
“You see, I’m not just a pretty arse.”
“Now you’ve spoiled it.”
“What we really need to do,” and Pohl leant forward conspiratorially, “is focus on finding a way to eject spirits. It will be hugely useful.”
“Perhaps,” Theo ventured, “you should find a way to bring peace, rather than just eject things.”
“Oh, well, yes,” and Pohl looked a little guilty.
“Please, no offence professor, but a switch in emphasis perhaps. Send them on somewhere, or whatever.”
“That would be the sensible thing” and Dee fished it out a beeping phone. “Oh, a message. It says ‘have you seen the news, Prince William and family are missing. Their plane has probably crashed.’”
“Oh god,” Theo said, turning white.
“You alright Theo?”
“Prince William! Prince William! George! The next in line!”
“I take it the army is very keen on the royals?”
“Yes. They’re my boss. You don’t like the royals?”
“I don’t know them,” Dee explained. Then she slipped into decisive mode. “Right, you’ve still got a funeral to organise and we’ve got a house to purchase and get change of use consent for. While the rest of the country has stopped let’s go and try to catch up.”
Eleven: Serial Killers Can Be Quite Antisocial Really
Traffic duty was many things, but mostly it was fucking boring. You sit there in your police car, waiting for another officer down the road to message you that a speeding car is coming through, then you stop it, issue a severe bollocking, a ticket depending on your mood, and then return to your car for a swig of cooling coffee and the dream of leading drug’s raid or bringing a murderer to justice. Anything else, basically, than sitting there to capture someone who doesn’t even know they’re doing something wrong, will stare at you blankly as you correct them, and will probably speed up again when they pass the next corner.
“We could play a game,” one officer tried.
“Of what?”
“We could guess whether we’d shag the next driver.”
“Right, because the police need to look more sexist.”
“People won’t know.”
“People always find out, that’s why they put us through classes designed to stop us doing stupid shit like that.”
“Spoilsport. What’s your idea?”
“I don’t have an idea, I don’t think we should be playing games.”
The machine bleeped, and one officer took a record of the car which was coming towards them.
“Right, I’ll stop it,” and he climbed out sighing, walked to the road, and spotted the red one with the right number plate. The officer then stood in the road and raised a hand for the car to stop.
It did, stopped dead, and the officer began walking forward. His hackles began to rise when the driver, a man in his late fifties, clearly disengaged his seat belt, and then a foot was put down and the car began to speed towards the officer. No, not towards him, for the car veered hard to the left. As the officer span the car sped past him, but he’d turned to see the car drive in a straight line towards a tree down the road, and then crash into said tree with as much velocity as an eight cylinder car can get in that short time.
“Are you alright?” the other officer called, running to check.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine, but him…”
They ran down the road, and soon discovered the man had been thrown out of the vehicle straight into the tree his car was now wrapped around.
“Is he dead?”
“His head resembles a quiche, he’s dead.”
“Shit, how did he hit that tree?”
“He aimed for it.”
“What?”
Yes, the officer was certain. “He killed himself. He took his seat belt off so he’d fly out, and then drove right into the tree.”
“That’s a fucking over reaction to a speeding ticket.”
They both turned and looked at each other, until the silent comprehension turned into words. “He’s done something seriously bad.”
“Seeing as how the car hasn’t blown up yet, maybe we should check the boot and then ring headquarters. Let someone else work that out.”
“Fuck that, I want to be at the front of this. Traffic duty can bugger itself, there better be a bloody corpse in the boot.”
Jeff was waiting, and that meant a chance to grab some lunch. The local supermarket had a range of packed sandwiches, but he’d gone for a walk round the area and found a sandwich shop that, bad punning title aside, did something twice the size for less price, and one of which he was tucking into now. With any luck they’d be another fifteen minutes and he could finish. However, a uniformed officer came out now, through the rain, and knocked on his car window.
“Get in,” Jeff said, and the uniform did so. “What have you found?”
“So far sir, we haven’t found anything. We can’t find drugs, sex or violence. Just a bad taste in music.”
“Well that’s inconvenient.”
“Of course, we don’t actually know there’s anything to search for. Maybe he didn’t try and kill himself.”
“Thanks, I’ve got one last thing in mind, but everyone can pack up and go. You’re right, we’re here on a hunch.”
The officer left into the night, and Jeff reached for his phone.
Dee and her friends arrived half an hour later, and Jeff was bemused to see they’d gone via the same sandwich shop.
“What happened to come quickly?” Jeff asked, jacket hood up for the rain as he leant into Dee’s open window.
“This is quickly. Now if you wanted fucking fast you should have said.”
“Right, right, come inside, number eight.”
They were soon inside, munching.
“What seems to be the problem officer?”
“Well Nazir, a man might have killed himself rather than speak to a policeman about to issue a speeding ticket.”
“Bit of an over reaction.”
“Yes, that’s what they said. So, we decided to look round the dead man’s house, but we couldn’t find anything, and we can’t exactly tear it apart on that evidence. So, can Joe have a look round and see if there’s a ghost?”
“I’m sure he can.”
“I’m already on it!”
“Excellent. Excellent. Who is here?”
“No one.”
“Not excellent. There’s no ghosts?”
“Sort of.”
Jeff closed his eyes briefly. “Could we get to something useful.”
“Well, no humans haunt the place, so no one to talk too. But there’s the ghost of a dog here and he’s doing that Lassie thing.”
“He’s talking?”
“Lassie didn’t talk you fuckwit.”
“No, running back and forth as if he wants us to follow.”
�
��What type of dog?” Pohl asked.
“Err, medium.”
“That’s not… nevermind.”
“Okay, we follow the dog,” and soon they were in the conservatory peering out.
“The dog is telling me there’s something in that back flower bed.”
“The one filled with little bedding plants?” Jeff checked.
“Yes, that one.”
“Hmm. They look like you could fling them in overnight, no age to that bed. And the dog thinks something is in it?”
“Yes.”
“But no ghosts?”
“No.”
“Right, well, as an investigating detective, I am going to take a spade from the garage and have a poke about. When it’s stopped raining.”
“Very brave,” Dee smirked, then took a bite of sandwich.
“Well you can always go and do it.”
“Sadly I didn’t wear my waterproof knickers today.”
Twenty minutes of chat passed, before the rain came to a halt, and the sandwiches had too.
“If you can arrange more crime scenes near that shop we’d be grateful.”
Jeff shook his head, got a spade, and went to the bed. “Right, point out exactly where the dog is, I don’t want to turn this whole thing over.”
“About two feet to your left. By the red thing.”
“Flower Joe, flower.”
“Right,” and Jeff sunk the spade into the ground. It didn’t hit anything, so he hefted out a mound of soil, and sunk the spade into the hole. Here it hit something metal.
“One nil to the ghost talkers,” Nazir smiled.
It took a little longer to uncover a metal box, but this was taken into the garage.
“It’s not locked,” Jeff noticed, and flipped it open. Inside was a pile of documentation, from papers to photographs. “Okay, what do we have here, ah.”
“That’s not a good ah.”
“No, it’s a photo of a man that’s naked and tied up and looking terrified.”
“Okay, that’s an ah.”
“I suppose it was always going to turn out like this, despite my wishing something innocuous happened here. Why can’t I ever find credit card fraud instead of serial killers?”
“You think it’s a killer?” Joe asked.
“Each of these photos has someone different tied up and naked. They are not necessarily in one human shaped piece. So, yes.”
“The dog is very keen we keep digging.”
“Go and stop the dog before it disturbs any bones, there may be people under there.”
“Erm, Jeff,” Dee said, “it’s a ghost dog?”
“Oh. Fuck. Yeah.”
“I think we have a problem,” Pohl said looking at a piece of paper.
“Beside the load of dead people?”
“Yes. Your serial killer is dead, the crime should be over.”
“Well… yes.”
“But only the older one is dead.”
“Oh?”
“This letter is from an older man who is passing on the skills of a serial killer to a man in his twenties just starting out. But it’s a draft, handwritten corrections are all over it. Would it be fair to assume someone might have really finished this and sent it on?”
Jeff winced. “The man in the car was in his fifties, not twenties. So you’re saying there’s someone else out able to do,” and he waved at the records, “all this?”
“I believe so.”
“For fuck’s sake, is there anyone good in this world?”
“Hello?” Joe offered and was ignored.
“What now?” Nazir asked.
“I get this called in and logged officially, then we go through everything to see who we can identify and who this other person is. We need them, and we need them quickly, before they’ve realised what’s gone wrong here. Actually, thinking about it, we can probably keep this out of the press for a while as a help.”
When Dee next saw Jeff again he hadn’t slept. Her car pulled up in front of a nondescript house, and she and the team went over to Jeff’s car offering fresh coffee and sweet treats to try and wake him up further. They saw his heavy lidded eyes and bloodshot retinas, and Dee instantly wanted to send him home for sleep. But she soon remembered that wasn’t her place, and they all had a job to do here.
“What have you found?”
“We haven’t traced the other killer. We’ve been through all the documents, and we’ve got nothing to trace. Very, very frustrating. However, we are having some luck. We’ve been tracing our older killer’s history, and he once owned this house. He was here about ten years ago, and the house was sold to an older lady who doesn’t move about much. It was sold furnished, kept the same, and at first we didn’t find anything, but now we have the evidence we were able to bring the scanning people in and they found a cavity beneath the lounge. We ripped the carpet up, cracked through a simple concrete cover, and found a hole in the ground and then a homemade cellar. I’ll show you.”
Soon the group was walking through the house, and soon they were staring into a hole in the floor, Jeff shining his torch through.
“I see lots of little chambers coming off?” Dee noted.
“All filled with bodies, wrapped up in plastic.”
“It’s like a tomb.”
“Yes Nazir, it is. But we’re having to have health and safety round to make sure it’s not going to make everything suddenly collapse. So, we have some time. Can you see if there are ghosts?”
There were ghosts all right, there were plenty of ghosts, and Dee had to put her best journalistic shorthand, and Jeff note making, skill to speed through everything each spirit wanted to get across. There were descriptions of the killer, of how they died, messages on who they were and what should be done next. There was a huge amount of detail, and they finished drained. But there was a major problem.
“That’s the last of them,” Joe said.
“I see,” Jeff said, shaking his wrist.
“That’s not a happy see,” Dee noted.
“No, and you know why. This mass of detail stops ten years ago. We can nail everything he did while he was in this house, but once he left… and certainly not once he picked up an apprentice or whatever the hell we’re calling this. It’s useful, it’ll help bring closure to a lot of people once we work backwards to prove it, but it’s also totally useless in stopping more people from dying.”
“The ghosts don’t like being called useless,” Joe informed him.
“Can we just let me have a grumpy moment here please. Thanks.”
“You need sleep,” Dee suggested.
“Hopefully the next property will be identified soon.”
“Then sleep before that.”
“I can’t, I have…”
“Get in your car and snooze for half an hour at least, we’ll cover for you.”
“That’s a nice idea Dee, but I doubt they’d let you.”
“Well, what can we do?” Joe asked.
“I hate to say it, but probably nothing. We are finding the next address, so until then we don’t have any ghosts you can talk to helpfully.”
“Maybe we could all have a sleep and then inject Jeff with it?”
“Thanks Nazir, our science correspondent.”
“Right, I have a locality and a pile of missing person’s reports to look at, stay on the end of the phone.”
“As ever.” They watched him leave.
“He’ll have a heart attack or something,” Dee sighed.
“Getting protective are we?”
“Shut up. Look, that sandwich shop is nearby, so shall we?”
They ordered substantial meals and sat eating, then chatting, until a good ninety minutes had passed. Then Jeff rang.
“You sound like shit.”
“Thanks,” Jeff replied to Dee. “But I have something for you to do. We have a lock up garage that the older man owned until two years ago. I want you to meet me there and you can your thing.”
“Then we
can speak to the ghosts.”
“I’m glad one of you is keeping your youthful exuberance, I will take the injection please.”
It took ten minutes, but they were soon there. Jeff arrived a little after.
“No police?”
“No professor, I’m the first. So if we crack on…”
“Well, I won’t keep us in suspense, there’s a fucking ghost here!”
“Of a dog or a human?”
“Oh, yeah, of a human. Hi, how are you, we’re, yeah, she knows we’re police. That’s right, a new paranormal department, so you saw the person who killed you? Ah, two people killed you, I see, a younger man and an older one. And you saw what both looked like? Do you remember enough to give us a description? Excellent, excellent. What, oh, yes, he’s a detective and he tends to do that little dance whenever a case had broken open. Yes, you probably would expect more gravitas given the situation, but he has been up for a long time.”
“Sorry, sorry.”
“Right, we’ll just need the details…”
Jeff wrote for the next five minutes, until he had a description so complete he could have painted the likeness, as well as a name, licence plate numbers and vocal characteristics.”
“I wish all eyewitnesses were as good as you,” he smiled, waving his notebook. “I shall get this information sent out and we shall find this man ASAFP.”
“What?”
“As soon as fucking possible.”
“But of course.”
“You might as well come with me, I’m sure I can get the address as we’re driving, you can stand out the front and look threatening.”
“I’m glad you think we can do that,” Dee said.
“Well, try and look threatening.”
“Hey!”
“No one looks threatening when you’ve seen them naked.
“I want that deleted from your mind.”
Jeff allowed himself to speed through the city, until he slammed to a halt outside a house.
“Subtle,” Dee called as Jeff jumped out of the car and ran to the front door, but as the group followed they saw why: the door was open already. When they caught up Jeff was peering at the frame and inside.
“We have to make sure we’re not stumbling into something dangerous,” he said, “but I’m fairly certain the door isn’t rigged to explode or anything.”
