‘Is one of you two Jake Fletcher?’ she asked, her voice clipped and to the point.
Frank growled at her, teeth bared. I gave him a quick pipe down wave and he took a step back, lips still drawn back over his gums.
To the woman I said, ‘I’m Jake, and this is my partner, Frank. Together, we’re Fletcher & Fletcher, paranormal investigators. Show her, Frankie boy…’
He handed her our business card. The logo read, No Case Too Cold. I came up with that.
The woman scanned our offering, keeping her distance from my glassy-eyed companion.
‘Is he okay?’ she asked.
‘Yes. Why?’
‘It’s just… he looks like he just clawed his way out of a shallow grave.’
I chuckled. ‘Funny you should say that, he is a bit on the dead side. But then who isn’t these days, right?’
‘Wait… are you saying he’s a zombie?’
I made a face. ‘Ooh, we don’t like the zed word around here. Bit reductive.’
She squinted to get a better look at Frank. ‘He looks just like you.’
‘Yeah, he’s my dead spit. Get it? Because we’re both…’
The woman regarded me with a mixture of confusion and contempt. It was obvious that my cheeky barrow boy act wasn’t having the disarming effect I’d hoped for, so I switched gears.
‘Why don’t you make yourself comfortable and tell me your name?’
I took a seat and shot the cuffs of my jacket, enjoying the comforting feel of its embrace around my shoulders. For some, a suit is a drab, suffocating thing, but not for me. My suit is a second skin, black as midnight and crisp as a fresh banknote.
I gestured for our guest to pull up a pew opposite me. She sighed and lowered herself onto Frank’s chair.
‘My name is Talisa. People call me Tali.’
‘Thanks for stopping by, Tali. What can I do you for?’
She leaned forward and spoke with a dark urgency in her voice. ‘I need you to find the man who killed me.’
So far, so good. Well, for me, not so much for her. Helping lost souls find their way to the afterlife was my bread and butter, but I had to be careful, I’ve been burned by shady ladies before. Just because the woman sitting across my desk had the kind of looks that turned every man she met into a knight of old, didn’t mean I had to start behaving like some raving Galahad. These days I took extra precautions. I didn’t work for anyone unless they passed my screening process.
‘How did you find out about this agency?’ I asked.
‘A police officer told me about you. You know, after it happened.’
After it happened being a polite way of saying, After I went tits up.
Tali explained how she’d hovered at the scene of the crime for a while, screaming at deaf police officers until one started talking back to her: a woman by the name of Detective Stronge.
Ah, yes. DCI Kat Stronge.
Stronge had taken the victim aside and given her the skinny. Said she wasn’t able to get into her case there and then—that she had to carry out her duty as a police officer and couldn’t be seen talking to herself like a loony (her fellow officers being incapable of seeing ghosts). Stronge explained that she’d catch up with Tali later, and that in the meantime she should pay me a visit. That I’d look after her.
So would I?
Tali had passed the first test. I’d set up that filter system with Stronge personally (and it was good to know the arrangement was working). I stole a quick glance at the framed P.I. certificate on the wall—the one Stronge gave me in the spirit of our rebuilt friendship.
Back to work.
‘How long ago did you die?’ I asked Tali. That last word might seem insensitive, but I believe in the direct approach. Besides, the usual euphemism, “passed on”, wasn’t appropriate here. The only way Tali was passing anywhere was if we tipped the scales of justice in her favour, and I was still on the fence about taking her on as a client.
‘A few hours ago, I think. There’s a part I don’t remember, right after he…’
She didn’t need to finish.
‘Can I ask you something?’ I said. ‘How is it that you’re so comfortable with being a goner? Most dead folks I meet at your stage are screaming a big blue streak.’
She wrung her hands. ‘I panicked at first—of course I did—but I have some clarity now. Now I know what I want.’
‘And what’s that?’
‘Revenge.’
I could relate to that. It was the same with me when I kicked the bucket. There’s something about being brutally murdered that really puts a bee in your bonnet.
‘So none of this supernatural stuff fazes you?’ I asked. ‘Being a ghost? Walking through walls? All that jazz?’
‘I am a bit weirded out by the zombie,’ she confessed.
Frank narrowed his eyes.
‘Again, we don’t like the zed word,’ I reminded her.
Tali leant forward and gripped the edge of the desk. The ring she was wearing caught the streetlight that razored through the blinds, making its stone glint: an emerald set into a polished copper band.
‘I’m not new to this,’ she said. ‘I was born with the Sight.’
That explained that. Tali was an Insider, a normal with the ability to see the invisible dance we call the Uncanny. I was that way too, before I became a fully-fledged paranormal phenomenon.
‘I see,’ I replied. ‘And what did you do with that special knowledge?’
‘I became a sex worker.’
Not what I was expecting.
‘Um, how exactly do those two things…’ I interlaced my fingers, ‘...slot together?’
‘I used what I knew to carve out a niche for myself: a regular person who services the freaks.’ Her mouth sharpened into something close to a smile. ‘It’s funny, there are all these nutty creatures in this city, but to them, I’m the piece of strange.’
I drummed my fingers on the desk, considering her story. ‘Don’t you have someone who’s supposed to look after you?’
‘No pimp, no madam,’ she shot back. ‘I fly solo, always have.’ A realisation dawned and she corrected herself. ‘Always did.’
Tali seemed genuine enough, but I needed to test every angle of her story: shake it, bend it, see where it buckled, even if it meant asking some indelicate questions.
‘So what’s it like, sleeping with monsters for a living?’
She flinched at that. ‘The money’s better but the work’s weirder. You take what you can get.’
‘And what you got,’ I said, eyes drifting to her forehead, ‘was a bullet in the nut.’
Her face pulled into a scowl. ‘What the hell would you know?’
‘About prostitution? Not a lot, I guess. Try not to hold it against me.’
I felt a heavy hand on my shoulder: Frank’s. It was accompanied by a small shake of the head, a sign that I’d taken it far enough. Tali’s story checked out. She’d come through the screening process clean. I didn’t need to grill her any further.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I’m not making judgments about your profession—we’re all doing what we can to get by. Why don’t you get back to your story and we’ll see if we can figure out what happened here?’
Her grimace went away and she relaxed in her chair. ‘He was just another John. Nothing special. Nothing that set any alarm bells ringing.’
‘What flavour of Uncanny are we talking? Vampire? Werewolf? Some horny wizard?’
‘Couldn’t tell you. He paid, I laid. All I know for sure is that he must have had money, because my services don’t come cheap.’
I didn’t doubt it. This was no twenty-quid-a-pop hussy. This woman could have charged a king’s ransom for what she was offering.
Without taking my eyes off her, I produced a yellow legal pad from a desk drawer and tossed it to Frank.
‘Can you describe him to me?’
She gave a half-shrug. ‘Dark hair, slim build, fairly tall. Nothing remarkable about him
.’
‘Any distinguishing features? Scars, blemishes, birthmarks, a big tattoo of the Tasmanian Devil on his arse?’
She laughed dutifully. ‘There was one thing. He had purple eyes.’
‘Purple?’
‘Violet, I guess you’d call them. Quite unusual.’
Frank took up a pen and scribbled down the details, dictating Tali’s words in his big looping scrawl.
‘Anything else?’
‘No, that’s it, really. Other than how good-looking he was. A real pretty boy.’ She spat the last two words out like they were pieces of rancid meat.
I wasn’t too surprised by the news that he was easy on the eye. Killers rarely look like the slope-browed apes you expect them to be. In the real world, the villain doesn’t present as a monster. He’s the guy who waves when he passes you by, who chats about the weather, who knows how to tip a waitress right. That’s why we’re shocked when we find out he’s a murderer; not just because of the terrible things he did, but because we can’t understand how his evil co-existed with the good he showed the world.
‘I’ll take the case, Tali,’ I said, the words leaving my mouth before I was ready to say them. ‘I’ll find your killer and make sure he gets what’s coming to him.’
This was our chance for a do-over. To succeed where we failed with the revenant.
Tali’s fingertips went to her forehead and traced the edges of her bullet wound. ‘Thank you. You’re doing the world a favour, trust me. That man needs to die.’
‘Whoa, easy,’ I said. ‘I’m a P.I., not a bounty hunter. No one’s getting killed here.’
She shot to her feet, sending Frank’s chair skittering back on its coasters. ‘What the hell? You just said you were going to help me.’
‘And I will, by seeing to it that the person responsible for your murder pays for his crimes.’
‘Pays how?’ she demanded.
‘That’s up to the London Coven, and believe me, they don’t muck about when it comes to taking Uncanny killers off the streets.’
Tali’s fists unfurled. ‘I’ve heard of the coven. All right. If that’s who’s dealing with him, I’m okay with that.’
The coven had a reputation for treating those who broke the law with swift, brutal justice. Any Insider knew that.
‘So what happens next?’ asked Tali.
I smiled and reached into a filing cabinet for a bottle of Bushmills.
‘Next we have a drink.’
Chapter Four: Lights Up on Darkness
Used to be I’d take the lazy man’s choice when I wanted to get somewhere—pull a Houdini and translocate instantly to my intended destination—but that was before I found Frank. Since we partnered up, I’ve started walking again. I’ve even come to enjoy it, at least when I’m not being stalked by a group of shady, unidentified figures that looked like something Stephen King might dream up after a concussion.
There were four of them in total, scattered wide. They kept their distance, hugging the shadows like rats as I pretended not to notice we were being tailed, but the reflections I caught in passing windows showed me our pursuers were something... other. Something with unnaturally long fingers connected by fleshy webbing, and arched backs that forced the ridges of their spines to show through their suit jackets. Something with fishbelly white skin and drawn, sunken features studded with eyes the colour of blood clots.
These weren’t people, these were monsters.
But then monsters are a common sight in London, at least if you have the eyes to see them. In any case, the problem I had wasn’t that the figures at our heels were inhuman. What bothered me was that I didn’t know who or what they were, let alone what they wanted. All I had were guesses. Were they out to mug us? Were they old adversaries I’d picked up somewhere along the road, here to settle an old score? Or were they connected to the case somehow? Could these things be related to the person who killed my client? It seemed unlikely. The man I was after had been described as a looker, but these hatchet-faced things would make even the most accommodating woman’s knees slam shut. No, this felt like a B-story to me. Something separate from the investigation.
‘Pick up your trotters,’ I whispered to my partner.
Frank quickened his step, but the figures followed suit. How long were these mystery men going to keep after us, I wondered. Would they hound us all the way to the finish line, or were they looking for a quiet side street they could bundle us into so they could do whatever it was they intended to do?
Frank must have sensed my growing unease because I saw his fists bunch and watched his lip curl back in a rictus snarl.
‘Calm down, Spartacus,’ I told him, placing a cooling hand on his forearm. ‘We’re not looking for a ruck; they’ve got us two-to-one.’
I was thinking of ways we could give our pursuers the slip when something strange happened: the figures in our rearview stopped suddenly, turned their backs on us, and headed off in the other direction.
‘Weird.’
They’d been following us a good while—so long that the sun was making an appearance now, turning the sky the colour of a migraine. I wondered if it was the approach of dawn that had encouraged our pursuers to cease their shadowy pursuit. Was it vampires hounding us?
Frank ground to a halt and watched the hunched figures peel off into the distance. Whatever it was our stalkers wanted, we wouldn’t learn of it tonight.
I gave my partner a sideways look. ‘Come on, pal, we’ve got places to be.’
It was raining knives by the time we rocked up at Cath’s Caff, a 24-hour greasy spoon considered by many to be a pot of fried gold at the end of a long, grey rainbow. We ducked inside and found Detective Stronge hanging her sopping wet coat on a rack by the door. She wore shoulder pads, a sober head of hair, and dark red lipstick. In short, she looked the way she always did: like she was on her way to solve an X-File.
Stronge was on her own this morning. Her partner, DC Maddox, was on sick leave, recovering from the aftermath of our last adventure. His absence didn’t make her any less of a force, though. DCI Kat Stronge was tough as nails and sharp as barbed wire.
‘Fuck!’ she cried as I tapped her on the shoulder, forgetting that I don’t make footsteps and scaring the living bejeezus out of her.
A clod of builders sharing a red-top tabloid looked up from their booth to check Stronge was okay.
Stronge composed herself, turned her back on them, and hissed at me from the side of her mouth, ‘This is why people don’t like ghosts, Fletcher.’
Before I could apologise, the titular “Cath” arrived, sizing Stronge up through piggy eyes framed with tar-thick mascara.
‘You eating or you just gonna stand there like a lemon?’ she barked through a puckered mouth shaped by decades of tugging on cheap cigarettes.
Stronge did a quick headcount. ‘Table for three,’ she said, then quickly recalibrated when she registered the confusion on Cath’s face and remembered I was invisible to our host. ‘Make that two.’
Cath sighed and begrudgingly escorted us to a table covered in a sticky plastic cloth still bearing tea spills from the diners before us. We sat down, and Stronge selected some fare from the blackboard above the counter.
‘Cup of coffee and a plate of eggs, chips, and black pudding. Eggs, well-done; coffee the same colour as the pudding. Ta.’
‘What about him?’ asked Cath, jabbing a carrot-coloured digit at Frank.
‘He’s not hungry,’ Stronge replied on behalf of her companion. ‘Bit green around the gills.’
Cath sloped away, rolling her eyes and muttering a string of dire oaths. Only once she was out of earshot did we get to business. I brought Stronge up to speed on what Frank and I had learned so far, and she shared her notes with us.
‘A guest in the neighbouring room heard the gunshot and phoned reception,’ she said. ‘A hotel porter was first on the scene.’
‘And what did he stumble into?’ I asked.
‘Nothing too messy. Whoe
ver killed that girl didn’t fetishize it. Didn’t cut her up or play with her blood or anything weird. It was a clean kill: one tap to the head. Pop.’
‘You make it sound like he did her a favour.’
‘Come on, you know what I mean. Compared to some of the bodies we’ve seen, this one was a prom queen.’
Our waitress returned with a cup of mud and dropped it in front of Stronge like it was radioactive, which it might well have been. The way Frank grimaced at the smell of it certainly suggested so, and he was no potpourri himself.
‘Any sign of the murder weapon?’ I asked, getting back to it.
‘Not present,’ Stronge replied.
I scratched my chin. ‘I need to get a gander at that crime scene.’
‘Not necessary,’ she replied. ‘My team already conducted a thorough search. Everything that needs finding has been found.’
‘Okay. So what did you turn up? Did you lift any dabs you can run through the HOLMES suite?’
Her scant lips formed a smile full of spice and mischief. ‘Well, look at you. That’s real detective talk, none of that super sleuth, Dick Tracy shit. You’re really getting the hang of this, aren’t you, Fletcher?’
She’d have put me in a headlock and ground her knuckles into my crown if she could. Instead, she just laughed, leading Frank to join in the fun with a gurgling chortle that added a small lagoon of drool to the already mucky tablecloth. I gave my partner a cuff to the back of the head before he attracted any more unwanted attention.
‘You don’t even know what you’re laughing at, you big lug.’
‘Leave him alone,’ said Stronge.
‘How about we get back to work and leave out the piss-taking, eh?’
She put her frown away, but it didn’t go easy. ‘Fine. Back to the fingerprints. We were expecting to find two sets—’
‘Only two? What about prints from previous guests?’
‘Not in this place. The John booked a suite in a Mayfair hotel. The cleaning crew had that room sparkling before him and the victim got anywhere near it.’
Deadly Departed: A Supernatural Thriller (Fletcher & Fletcher, Paranormal Investigators Book 2) Page 3
