We both looked at Obe. He shook his head.
‘What about Ben?’
‘He doesn’t have any friends,’ Adam said.
‘None at all?’
‘He’s only in London for two weeks a year, and he spends most of that reading.’
Obe frowned. ‘Malcolm sent him on one of the teen outreach programmes last week. He could have met someone there.’
We all looked at each other. Meet someone on a course, ask them to hide a dead father a week later. It was a bit of a stretch, but I didn’t have any better ideas.
‘We should have a list of the participants somewhere,’ I said. ‘I’ll see if Malcolm saved a copy to the main drive. Obe can pull in some favours, put the word out among our clients that if anyone sees anything they need to let us know.’
Before I had the chance to mention the favour I’d promised Haddad, Obe pulled at his beard and said, ‘Shouldn’t the police be the ones doing this?’
Adam’s face tightened. ‘You mean the people who just tried to shoot Ben?’
‘It wasn’t bullets. They use tranquiliser darts,’ I said.
‘So? That’s just as bad. If they’d hit him, a fall from that height could have killed him.’
I raised my hands, conceding the point.
Obe coloured. ‘I mean if we find Ben or Malcolm, and the police think we were trying to hide them, we’ll all end up in prison.’
Adam set his mug down on the desk hard enough that it cracked. I jumped. ‘That lot don’t know their arse from their elbow. They’re the ones who let Ben fly off. And if they’d have been any better at hitting a moving target, Ben would be dead.’
Obe visibly shrank back.
Adam sighed, and his shoulders sank. ‘I’m sorry. This whole thing is really freaking me out. What happens when they catch Ben? I know harbouring a zombie is a mandatory sentence, but Ben’s only fourteen. They’ll take that into account, won’t they? He’s too young to go to prison.’
Obe’s beard shifted as he gave a smile acknowledging the apology. ‘The age of criminal responsibility in England is ten. And the Necroambulism Act was designed to be draconian. There’s not a lot of wriggle room.’
I grabbed at a straw. ‘But there is some?’
Obe waggled his hand back and forth. ‘Not if they catch him. It’s a minimum five years. He’s under fifteen, so it would be a Secure Children’s Home first, then they’d move him to a Young Offenders Institution.’
Adam broke in. ‘So he wouldn’t be in with the adults. That doesn’t sound so bad.’
‘Yes, it would be,’ Obe said. ‘Malcolm and I did enough time in institutions. It would kill him to know his son is in one.’ The irony of his statement seemed to pass him by.
I said, ‘You said if they catch him. What if Ben turns himself in?’
‘Then the judge would have a lot more leeway in his sentencing. There’s precedent for avoiding a custodial sentence. There was a case in Birmingham a year ago where the defendant was given only a Youth Rehabilitation Order. Those circumstances were different, but the girl in that case was also harbouring a zombie, and I think we could make a legal argument.’
‘A YRO,’ I said. ‘Are you sure?’
‘If we got a sympathetic judge, and if Ben voluntarily gave himself up. That was the extenuating circumstance in the Appleby case.’
Adam looked at us expectantly. Obe explained what a Youth Rehabilitation Order was. They’d been introduced in 2008 as a flexible method to deal with young offenders. In a worst-case scenario, Ben would spend the next few years living under a curfew and jumping through behavioural programme hoops, but it was a hell of a lot better than prison.
We all looked at each other. There were a lot of ifs, but none of them would matter if the NRTs found Ben before we could find him and persuade him to hand himself in.
‘We’ve got plenty of contacts who wouldn’t speak to the police,’ Obe said. ‘Viv and I will call around, find out if anyone’s seen something.’
Adam nodded. ‘And me? What do I do?’
‘Well, do you have a pass for the lockdown?’ It hadn’t escaped my notice that Adam probably shouldn’t have been there.
‘Sort of. I nicked it off my dad to get here. He’s in thaumaturgical decontamination. It’s classed as an emergency service.’
‘Okay,’ I said slowly. ‘If you’re right about Ben not being able to fly far, someone might have seen them come down. You can do a door-to-door round Malcolm’s house. If the army stops you, just wave the pass. Tell them your sensors picked up possible magic spillage in the area. They won’t risk another Whitechapel just to send one man home.’
Adam nodded. ‘Fine. That works for me.’ He pulled a business card out of his pocket and handed it to me. ‘I want a call the moment you hear anything.’
‘Of course.’
He stood up, and we shook hands again. Obe and I both breathed a sigh of relief when we heard the reception door close behind them. My stomach untensed, and evidently Obe’s did too because he reached for the stash of chocolate biscuits he kept in his top drawer. He offered me one. I took it. I was ravenous.
Ravenous. The thought brought up the image of the little cling-film-wrapped parcels in Malcolm’s freezer. The biscuit went stale in my mouth. I put the remainder on the desk.
‘Obe...’
He didn’t meet my eyes. ‘Malcolm didn’t kill anyone, Vivvie. I know him.’
He knew the human. Not the zombie. I opened my mouth, then closed it. Obe’s eyes were bloodshot, and his movements as he ate the biscuits were jerky, if controlled.
‘You better get calling,’ I said.
I shut the door gently on the way out. Obe would have to remove his blinkers about Malcolm soon enough, but I wasn’t inhumane enough to force him before he was ready.
13
London is built on the bones of its dead. They are everywhere, sunk into the depths and ground soil of the city. In the Square Mile you can hardly walk more than a few paces without stepping on someone’s grave. Most are long forgotten and long buried, and they are the reason London is filled with ghosts. The spirits of the dead can only set foot on hallowed ground; the spaces in between don’t exist for them. There are only two requirements for hallowed ground: someone must have died or been buried there, and there must have been a prayer said for the dead. The city is spotted with it, and the spirits jump through like holy hopscotch.
Ghosts are as common as rats throughout the city and about as popular. They’re also terrible gossips. You don’t have much else to do if you’re dead. If I was lucky, all I needed to do was find some ghosts and put out the word, with appropriate reward, that I was looking for a zombie.
I buttoned up my coat against the freezing air and pulled my woolly bobble hat down over my ears before I left the lobby. A single army truck was parked on the corner, but there were no soldiers in sight. A pair of elderly women scuttled across a pedestrian crossing further up the road. Them. They’re going to be first to go... That’s what Little had said. Them and me, it seemed. But I wasn’t planning on being out more than a few minutes, and Malcolm had only been gone a few hours. I was at a bigger risk of a fine. I checked again for the army, but saw no one official.
Rain drizzled down the back of my neck, and the small amount of morning sunlight had diminished even further, leaving a morning dark enough that you’d need a lamp to read your newspaper outside.
Two roads up from the office, sandwiched between a pound shop and a bookie’s, is the city’s worst chippy. The food is reasonable, but the building stands on one of the largest forgotten plague pits south of the river. It’s changed hands numerous times over the years, suffering from the aura that accompanies so many painful deaths and puts people off eating anything it produces. Shafiq, the current owner, has kept it going longer than most through sheer stubbornness. I looked both ways before crossing the street. The glass doors were locked. I tapped until he scurried over and flipped the latch. I slipped inside before
someone could spot me and send me home.
‘Bloody lockdown,’ he said. ‘These things cost me a fortune. And I have to throw away a ton of food.’
It was probably a little early in the morning for fast food, but it would be rude of me to use the premises without buying anything, and I’d been up at least four hours earlier than I’d planned. That made it effectively lunch time. I listened to Shafiq complain while he scooped hot squashy chips into Styrofoam containers then added generous lashings of vinegar and salt.
I sat on the table closest to the wall, food stacked in a plastic bag at my side. Shafiq was gentlemanly enough to pretend he had something to do at the back of the shop.
I squeezed my eyes shut then opened them again, and the place was full of ghosts. Only one was a plague victim, naked and filthy, with black buboes hanging from her armpits and thighs in haemorrhoid-like clusters. She was a regular and the reason I wasn’t tucking in to the chips already. I didn’t get her. I knew what ghosts were: dead souls who hadn’t transferred from the living world to the dead one, but I’d never been able to figure out why someone would want to spend their afterlife as a plague victim instead of going on to whatever came next.
The rest of the room looked like a casting call for a BBC History of Britain production. I even spotted what looked like a Roman matriarch at the back of the room. Ghosts that old are rare. They tend to get bored after a few hundred years and move on. I was impressed. Whoever she was, she had staying power.
I rapped on the table with my knuckles and took care to make eye contact with each of the spirits in turn so they could be sure I was talking to them and wasn’t just some random crazy off the street.
They looked at me with interest. A few I recognised, but the majority were strangers.
‘I’m looking for a zombie. He’s probably with a winged boy. A live one,’ I said. ‘I’d appreciate it if you’d spread the word.’
‘What’s in it for us?’ This from a middle-aged man about forty years dead, judging by his suit.
‘You get to pick Saturday’s movies at the Graveyard Theatre.’ The theatre was built in West Norwood cemetery in the seventies by a sympathetic medium. It did nothing, but play movies on a loop. The ghost man looked interested.
‘Has to be PG,’ I added.
The ghosts looked at one another, and one by one they disappeared. My little spook army.
Obe was on the phone when I came in. He turned his head away when he saw me. I set his food on his desk and pretended I didn’t see his puffy eyes and damp beard, then shut the door quietly behind me. I trotted into my office and shut the door. The handset on my desk flashed red as I settled down behind my desk.
I pressed the button to recall my voicemail and put it on loudspeaker, grimacing when I heard the female voice say, ‘You have thirty-two new messages.’
‘Hi, Viv, it’s Marco from the Times. Give me a call.’
I pressed seven to delete, and half-listened to the next message, this one from someone at the Sun, before I deleted it. The media liked us, or at least they liked Malcolm. The Lipscombe Trust was respectable and good for a sound bite. But now he was just another story, and they were calling anyone who knew him. At least I’d never made my mobile number public. I was tempted to delete them all without listening, but I had about a half dozen callbacks due from solicitors or government officials on other cases.
My PC booted up while I ate my chips and listened to and deleted the voicemails. I got about halfway through before I got irritated and switched it off. I stuck a sticky note over the blinking light.
I spent the first few minutes searching social media sites. I’d feel like a real idiot if we turned the city upside down looking for Ben, and he’d posted ‘Hey X, coming round yours. Rozzers are after me, lolz’ onto someone’s Facebook wall. It wouldn’t be the first time someone’d forgotten that posting something online was a lot more public than shouting it out loud in the street.
I found six Ben Brannicks on Facebook; three had profile pictures that let me dismiss them out of hand, two were in the US, and the other had just the generic question mark for a picture and no friends. I did a quick scan of a number of other sites, but turned up nothing.
Malcolm had saved contact details for the Outreach Programme in the shared drive. There were over a hundred names on the list. I began dialling.
Two hours later, all I had was a bunch of nopes, a bundle of left voice messages, and an exchange of text messages from Adam Brannick letting me know he hadn’t had much luck either.
I spent ten minutes going through work emails and rearranging appointments where I could, then went to rummage through the remains of Malcolm’s office. It was next to mine and used to be the cleaning supplies cupboard next to the toilet. He’d been on holiday when we’d moved to the new building and hadn’t been around to fight his corner when the offices were allocated. The idea at the time was that we’d swap every now and then to make it fair, but Malcolm settled into his cubbyhole, and when I brought it up, he didn’t think it was worth the faffle of moving all his stuff.
The room was just big enough for a plywood desk covered in an oak-style veneer, a black vinyl swivel chair, and a filing cabinet. It had no window, and the light flickered a couple of times before it took.
With the exception of a couple of family photos, Malcolm’s desk was covered in toys—plastic dinosaurs, bobble-headed dolls, and plastic doodads. He kept his stationery wherever it had landed last. But that was where the mess ended because Obe had been right. They’d taken everything else. There was a large clear square where his computer had been. His filing cabinet drawers gaped open showing nothing but office detritus: scabby elastic bands and discarded staples.
I sat in his desk and pulled open the top drawer. It was filled with debris—Mars Bars wrappers, paper clips, dead pens, old lotto tickets, and a few crumpled sticky notes that I flattened. I was rewarded with nothing but random scribbles and the unsurprising information that Malcolm liked to doodle boobs and unrealistically large penises.
It had been a long shot. Anything of interest had likely been taken by the NRTs. I picked up a discarded box from the corridor and began filling it with Malcolm’s doodads. I had no idea if Jillie would want them, but I felt the need to do something. Even if it was just packing up the remains of his desk.
The family photos went on top. There were two, although I knew there had been three. The one of Ben was missing. The largest remaining photo was of Jillie and Finn, and looked like a professional shot against a blank backdrop. The smaller was of Malcolm’s first wife and son, and the reason he got drunk so often.
Leslie and Alister Brannick died in a car accident ten years before I’d met him, but their names were seared on my brain because they came up whenever Malcolm was drunk, which was at least twice a month. He blamed himself, even though he hadn’t been on the same continent when it happened. From what I understood, Leslie had stopped her car at a level crossing and a drunk driver had shunted into the back of them, killing them all instantly.
Malcolm blamed himself because Leslie was in the United States when it happened, and she was there because she’d left him after finding out about yet another affair. The guilt I got. It wasn’t his fault, but I got it. What I didn’t get was Jillie. Malcolm had had the photo of Leslie and Alister on his desk as long as I’d known him, and I knew it well, so when Jillie first walked in the door at that first office bash and I got a good look at her, my mouth dropped. Same red hair, same colour eyes, same nose.
I’d whispered to Obe, ‘She could be Leslie’s sister.’
Obe had whispered back, ‘She is.’
And so Malcolm’s reputation as office weirdo (never in much doubt) was cemented. Still, always nice to know there were people out there whose families were even more screwed up than mine.
14
By six p.m., neither Obe nor I had any more information, and Adam had called to say he was packing it in for the night. Transport for London was still in lockd
own, so Obe drove me home to Sydenham through eerily quiet streets that should have been packed with post-Christmas bargain hunters but instead had just enough scurrying lockdown dodgers that we made it home without being stopped. There was no parking, so Obe doubled parked, leaving the engine running as I retrieved my backpack and bag of dirty clothes from the boot.
‘Say hello to the old man for me.’
‘Will do.’ I opened the door and put one foot out. ‘Obes?’
‘Yeah?’
I grimaced, embarrassed. The journey had been something of an ordeal smell-wise. Any thought of making anyone else draw straws flew out my head. ‘You really need to have a shower and put on some clean clothes. Sorry.’
‘Sure, Viv,’ Obe said absently. He waved at me as he drove off.
I fumbled for my keys and had to jiggle them in the lock a couple of times before it clicked. I shoved the stiff door open with my shoulder and stepped inside.
The house wasn’t mine. It belonged to my mother. It was old, beautiful, and spacious with high ceilings, original oak floorboards, and huge sash windows with window seats. But there was also the mould in the bathroom, rot in the flooring, and antique plumbing that made me worry the whole house was going to collapse every time I flushed the loo.
The stink of decomposition filled my nostrils. I picked my way through the hall with care. The man I called my stepfather and whose name I had inherited had never got the hang of... well, hanging stuff up or throwing it away, or washing anything. Dried mud littered the hallway where he’d tracked it in.
‘Stan?’
No answer.
The living room was empty, but the TV was on. I switched it off. Back in the hall I dodged Stanley’s tool bag then a toppled stack of National Geographic magazines that never got read but I wasn’t allowed to recycle and made it to the kitchen without tripping over anything. I opened the window above the sink. Cold, fresh air flooded in. He’d been downstairs. Milk and butter stood on the kitchen counter along with oil splashes from his daily fry-up, and dirty dishes filled the sink. There was an overflowing ashtray on the kitchen table. I checked the cooker. All the dials were in the correct ‘off’ position.
The Secret Dead (London Bones Book 1) Page 7
