The wall of sunlight had him completely hemmed in now. He stood, sucking in his stomach to avoid its fiery wrath. ‘Well?’ he cried. ‘You said you were going to help me!’
I remembered the picture on the sideboard upstairs. The one of the mother and daughter. I remembered the crib collecting dust.
‘I lied,’ I said, and turned my head just as the screaming started.
10
Dealing with those bloodsuckers had left a real knot in my head, and my body felt like it had been bounced down a flight of stairs built by M.C. Escher.
I ransacked the rest of the vampire den before I left. In the back garden I uncovered a fresh grave plot, and around that, several more disturbed patches of earth where other bodies had been buried. To the back of the garden I saw thriving flowers, fertilised no doubt by the husks of even older victims, long since turned to compost. Given time, I’d do everything in my power to make sure these victims were tracked down and shown the way to the Good Place, but until then I had a promise to keep.
A quick visit to the roadside Fergal was haunting told me that he’d yet to be released from the material plane. Executing the vampires would only have brought Fergal justice so long as they were the last pieces of the puzzle, and since the midnight caller story seemed to have some ring of truth to it, Fergal wasn’t permitted to depart this plane. Not yet anyway. Not until I’d figured out how he’d really wound up on the Heath and made the perpetrator pay for it. Until then he was stuck here, trapped between this world and the next, degenerating day by day. I had to work fast. It wouldn’t be long before Fergal became a wailing phantom, no more human than a bitter wind.
No. I wasn’t about to let that happen.
If what the flash-fried vampire had told me was true—and I had every reason to believe that it was—I needed to uncover the identity of this midnight caller and make him answer for what he’d done. Whatever that was. I still had no clue why he’d set Fergal up as the murderer of some random skinhead.
So, what to do now? My first thought was to go back to my office and take stock of the situation, except chances were the avenging angel would be cooling his heels there waiting for me to drop by. If he’d done his homework he’d know all of my favourite haunts, which meant no more visits to Frosty and no more drop-ins on Jazz Hands. The last one was particularly annoying as I really wanted to have a chat with her about that dud grenade she’d palmed me off with. For someone so concerned for my safety, she had a bloody funny way of showing it.
Keeping clear of that do-gooder angel meant staying on the move and avoiding my usual hangouts, but that didn’t mean my whole support structure was out of bounds. To solve this case I’d need information, equipment, muscle maybe. They wouldn’t come easy now, but just because I was being hunted, didn’t mean I couldn’t call upon help every once in awhile. After all, I wouldn’t save Fergal alone. Pulling this off was going to require a team effort.
‘Here,’ whispered DCI Stronge, sliding a manilla envelope across the table.
We were sat in a booth at a backstreet dive bar called The Black Heart. The Heart, as it was more commonly known to its patrons, was my kind of hole: a none more black boozer that played Sabbath and Maiden loud enough to make your teeth rattle. The place appealed to a select crowd, and its corners were dank to the point of being stygian, making it the perfect spot for a private conversation. I’d chosen The Heart as our rendezvous spot for this reason, and because I’d only been there once before, a long time ago, back when I was still drawing breath.
‘Could you open it up for me?’ I said, looking down at the envelope.
‘Oh right, yeah,’ replied Stronge.
Being mostly intangible, fine motor skills aren’t exactly my strong suit; something Stronge had a habit of forgetting. It was understandable. To someone with The Sight, I looked about as solid as anyone else in the establishment. To anyone else, Stronge was just a woman sat on her own muttering to herself, a not uncommon sight in Camden.
She checked we weren’t being watched and spread the contents of the envelope out in front of me. I peered at the documents, inspecting them under the dim light of an upside-down neon crucifix. Among them were copies of identity records, mug shots, and a rap sheet thicker than a preacher’s bible. They pertained to the second dead body discovered on the Heath. The skinhead.
‘His name’s Viktor Abdulov,’ said Stronge. ‘A.K.A. Valery Popov, A.K.A. Mikhail Sokolov. It wasn’t easy coming by an ID; it took Interpol to provide the match.’
‘You’ve been busy,’ I replied. I scanned Viktor’s list of known associates. ‘Says here he’s mobbed up.’
‘Was mobbed up,’ Stronge corrected. ‘He cut ties with the Bratva when he fled Moscow and came here.’
‘Any idea why he jumped ship?’
‘Nothing on record.’
I was lost. If this murder was a mob reprisal, what did Fergal have to do with anything? Of all the corpses in all the world, why was his selected to make the hit? Matter of fact, why did someone go to the trouble of reanimating a dead body at all? Why not just have some ruskie goombah do the deed? ‘What else do we know about this guy?’ I asked, pointing at one of Viktor’s eight-by-ten glossies.
‘Only that he was ripe for a clobbering,’ replied Stronge. ‘According to the Russian authorities he did jail time back home; multiple stretches for GBH and murder. There’s some kidnapping and sexual assault in there too. No one's going to mourn this guy.’
That certainly fit my theory as to why his ghost was absent from the crime scene. Any one of those items on his rap sheet would put his soul on a slippy slide to Hell.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘aren’t you going to ask me what I’ve been up to?’
Stronge sighed. ‘Go on then, what have you been up to?’
‘Funny you should ask. I just single-handedly beat the crap out of two vampires. Don’t like to brag about it though.’
I told Stronge about my quest to find Fergal’s ghost, and how it had led me to the bloodsuckers and their tale of a door-knocking corpse collector.
‘Jesus,’ she blurted, raking a hand through her bob. ‘So, what now? Where do we go from here?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said, ‘but when I’ve figured it out I’ll let you know.’
I was about to say my goodbyes when a bloke the size of Meatloaf squeezed into my side of the booth and right into my lap. Like, literally into my lap. Being ethereal and half his size, he managed to take up the space I was occupying and more besides, blotting me out completely.
‘Can I get you a snakebite, darling?’ he slurred at Stronge, totally oblivious to my presence.
Some people really have no manners.
11
Having watched DCI Stronge rebuff Meatloaf’s unwelcome advances (the aftermath of which makes me cross my legs just thinking about it) I headed out to decide what I was going to do next. My meeting with Stronge had ended up posing more problems than solutions. Now I had a mob angle to investigate as well as a supernatural one, and no obvious leads for either.
I needed answers, but I wasn’t going to find them on Stronge’s side of the law. To get the real nitty gritty I’d need to take a walk on the wild side. To kick in some doors and shake down some scumbags. And if ever there was a scumbag in this town, it was Camden’s own kingpin of crime, Vic Lords. Vic knew the borough’s seedy underbelly like no one else. If there was something rotten going on in these parts he almost certainly had a hand in it, and if he didn’t, he’d know the man who did. No one got up to mischief in Vic’s manor without his say so. He was Mr Big. Numero Uno. Top of the arsehole pyramid.
It cuts me up to this day that I used to work for the guy. What can I say? I was young, I needed the money. London isn’t exactly flush with exorcist jobs, but somehow Vic had the hook-up to every gig going. East to West and both sides of the River, if there was a haunting in this city, that man knew about it. All of this to make some coin of course. His system was to buy up spooked properties at rock botto
m rates, send me in to cleanse them, then flog them on for a tidy profit. Meanwhile, I got a regular pay cheque for doing the one thing in this world that I was actually good at. Everyone was a winner.
Well, not everyone.
As it turns out, gaming the housing market was just one of Vic Lords’ corrupt little schemes. I later learned that his interests included illegal gambling, drug dealing, sex trafficking, and more besides. Like a modern-day Hitler, he also grew to develop a hard-on for all things occult, and took to spicing up his nefarious deeds with a dash or two of the old diabolism. The damage Vic Lords has done to this city is incalculable, but somehow he always stays the right side of a jail cell. He’s smart, well organised, and has enough layers of insulation between him and his underlings to ensure that the law can never connect him to his criminal activities. The police can’t touch him.
But that didn’t mean I can’t.
I pictured Lords’ place of business, a squalid little office above a knocking shop near the canal, and readied to make the jump there. I was just about to do my thing when something completely unexpected happened. A battered grey limousine with blacked-out windows pulled up alongside me, screeched to a halt and ejected two brawny men in cheap suits. The goons came at me with intention, seized me by the wrists and shoved me into the rear seat of the vehicle. It happened so fast that it took me by complete surprise, and the next thing I knew I was sandwiched between the two heavies and facing their boss.
‘Hello, Jake,’ said the odious man sat opposite as the limo sped off with me inside. ‘It’s been a while.’
Speak of the devil.
Vic Lords took a drag on the stub of his cigar. ‘How you been keeping?’ he asked.
‘Oh, you know,’ I replied, ‘still dead.’
Vic smiled that smile of his; the one that even managed to give a ghost the creeps. He leaned forwards in his seat so I could get a better look at him. His bouffant of unnaturally dark hair had been slicked back with brylcreem, and his pale, sweaty skin was criss-crossed with a web of collapsed blood vessels, making him look as though he’d been cut from a wheel of rotten Stilton.
‘Thanks for joining me,’ he said, exhaling a thick lance of smoke that left the gloomy interior of the limo looking like a hot-boxed ride on its way to Glasto.
‘Thanks for saving me a trip,’ I replied. ‘I was about to pay you a visit, Vic.’
One of the goons tightened his grip on my arm and sneered. ‘That’s “Mister Lords” to you,’ he barked.
His teeth were small and sharp, like a piranha's. He wasn’t human, he was an eaves, an Uncanny creature that was capable of harming ghosts. Lords must have hired him and his friend with that in mind. Of course, whether his men could touch me or not, there was nothing they could do to stop me ghost-bouncing away and giving them the slip altogether.
‘So, what’s your game, Vic?’ I asked. ‘You finally planning on doing away with me?’
He laughed. ‘And why would I do that? I’ve got a soft spot for you, Fletcher, always have. Don’t forget you were one of my best employees once.’
The chance would be a fine thing. Choosing to work with Lords was one of the most regrettable decisions of my life. I’d say a good 90% of the red in my ledger came down to my association with that scumbag.
‘Well, so long as we’re best friends,’ I said, ‘why don’t you tell me what you know about the two dead bodies on the Heath?’
‘Only too happy to help, Jake. Why else do you think I went to all this trouble?’
I offered him a thin smile. ‘Let’s hear it then. What do you know?’
‘That’s not very polite,’ he replied, full of mock displeasure. ‘I’m offering you a present, Jake. And what do we say to people who give us presents?’
It caught in my throat but I forced myself to say it. ‘Thank you.’
He grinned so wide I thought the corners of his mouth might leave his face and meet at the back of his head. ‘You’re welcome,’ he said, and leaned in even closer. ‘The present is this: a warning. The man you’re chasing is best left alone. You’re out of your element with this one, Fletcher, take it from me.’
‘Where are you getting this?’
‘Same place I get all my good ideas,’ he replied, tapping his nose. ‘A little birdie told me.’
That was Vic’s code for augury. Since he started tapping into the dark arts he’d been using his powers to snoop on things outside of a normal man’s purview. As far as I could tell, he used these divinations mainly for financial profit and to keep an edge on his competitors. In essence, to get behind the other players’ backs and sneak a look at what cards they were holding. This was something different though. Vic had seen something he didn’t go looking for.
‘The man in the hood is from another place,’ he told me. ‘A bad place.’
‘He’s some kind of demon?’
Pit fiends pushing their way in from The Nether were getting to be an all too common occurrence since the London Coven were wiped out. The protections that Stella Familiar’s creators had put in place to keep demons and the like in check were gone now, leaving all hell to break loose in this city.
‘Not a demon,’ Vic replied. ‘Something else. Something ancient. Something… legendary.’
‘What are you telling me?’
‘I'm telling you there's a new man in town, Jake, and he's not playing for either of our teams.’
‘What am I supposed to do with that little titbit?’ I asked. ‘I’ve got a murder to solve, and nothing you’ve told me so far is going to help that happen.’ I offered him a shrug. ‘This so-called present you’ve given me is due a serious re-gifting.’
Vic sighed, disappointed. ‘Don’t do this to yourself, Jake. Leave it be. Let it go and don’t look back.’
‘Since when do you care what happens to me?’
‘How many times do I have to say it? I like you. You’ve got some old-fashioned ideas about right and wrong, but we can work on that. Give up this P.I. lark and get back on the payroll. Make some real money for a change. We could be living the life, you and me.’
‘I don't have a life, Vic. I'm dead.’
He grinned at me ghoulishly. ‘You could always be deader.’
‘Is that a threat?’
He blew out a long stream of smoke. ‘Not from me it ain’t.’
I’d gotten everything I was going to get from Camden’s kingpin of crime. ‘Well, Vic,’ I said, ‘always a pleasure, but if you don’t mind, I’m going to make a move.’
‘Of course,’ he replied. ‘Off you toddle.’
I was about to bounce when he held up a finger and gave me the old, “one last thing.”
‘What is it?’ I sighed.
‘Just a bit of advice before you go.’
‘Go on then, don’t keep me in suspense.’
‘Do yourself a favour, Jake. If you’re not going to listen to me, at least watch your back out there. Mark my words, son, the four horsemen are saddling up, and they don't care who they trample.’
12
When I checked my phone I found three missed messages, all from DCI Stronge. I’d muted the thing after it almost got me killed in the vampire den, and hadn’t noticed it buzzing in the back of Vic’s limo.
I hit Return Call and Stronge picked up before the second ring.
‘Where the hell have you been, Fletcher?’ she barked.
Some might have mistaken her tone for anger, but I preferred to think of it as unresolved sexual tension.
‘I was seeing a man about a dog,’ I replied.
‘One of these days I’m going to get a straight answer from you.’
‘I wouldn’t bet on it.’
She paused to take an exasperated breath. ‘Well, while you were otherwise engaged, we caught another one.’
‘Same MO?’
‘Looks that way.’
It seemed the murder on the Heath had only been the beginning. ‘Go on then,’ I said, preparing myself for the worst. ‘Lay it on
me.’
‘It happened just over an hour ago. A stabbing. Killer dropped dead at the scene, but his body was dead before it got there.’
‘Wait... you’re telling me the killer was dead but arrived on foot?’
‘That’s right.’
Dead bodies walking about of their own volition? Maybe there was something to Stronge’s zombie theory after all. ‘And all of this happened in broad daylight?’ I asked. ‘Any witnesses?’
‘Plenty, it happened at a kids’ playground.’
‘Jesus wept. Please tell me the victim was an adult.’
‘Yeah,’ she replied. ‘But not the killer.’
That I didn’t need to hear.
‘Twelve year old boy,’ Stronge went on. ‘Strolled up to the vic with a kitchen knife and stabbed him in the back before collapsing.’
Whoever was behind this was one sick puppy. ‘Where’s the kid now?’ I asked.
‘Both bodies have been moved to the bone house.’
She meant the morgue. ‘I'm not talking about the bodies. I’m talking about the ghosts.’
‘No sign of either. Same as before.’
That added up. If this one really was a match for the murder on the Heath, the adult was on his way to the fiery pit already. The kid though… the kid was out there somewhere, alone and scared out of his wits. ‘I’ve gotta find him,’ I said.
‘Not without me, you won't.’
Stronge traced the juvenile’s address to a nearby children’s home, a care facility for local hard luck cases. I knew places like this, I used to visit them as a kid when the Social would take me away after my mum’s drunken rages. I’d never spend too long away from her though, just enough time for her to complete an addiction programme, get the care order revoked, and then the cycle would start all over again. But this isn’t about me. This is about a little boy called Mike Dunn who died and became a sicko’s murder puppet.
Mike was just shy of thirteen years old and had lived at the children’s home since his parents died in a car accident last winter, leaving him with no next of kin. It wasn’t clear whether we’d find Mike’s ghost at the home, but it was a good place to start. It was likely that whatever we encountered there would call for a certain degree of diplomacy though, a quality DCI Stronge wasn’t exactly noted for. While she is an expert at running down bad guys, Kat’s matter-of-fact, no-beating-around-the-bush approach to police work had a habit of putting people’s noses out. For that reason, it was begrudgingly agreed that Stronge be the “face” of this investigation, while I play her Cyrano.
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