Something Rotten: An Uncanny Kingdom Urban Fantasy (The Ghosted Series Book 2)

by David Bussell

  ‘Because I’ve studied his needs, Mister Fletcher, and found his tastes to be strictly vanilla.’

  She certainly looked disappointed. ‘What’s the matter, Anya, murder not dirty enough for you?’

  She snorted. ‘There’s nothing carnal about this man’s desires. He doesn’t do what he does to get off, he does it because he’s working to a plan, and there’s nothing less sexy than a plan.’

  ‘Fine,’ I said, ‘but how is any of this going to help me catch the bloke?’

  ‘I don’t recall saying I’d help you,’ she said, firing a plume of smoke above her head.

  I was wasting my time. I pushed back my chair and stood up. ‘Thanks a lot, Anya. As usual, you’ve been absolutely no help at all.’

  I was almost at the door when she called after me. ‘Let me give you a piece of advice, Detective Fletcher. This world is made up of submissives and dominators, of those who take, and those who give. It’s time you asked yourself this: are you a top or a bottom?’

  I pushed open the door, but she wasn’t done.

  ‘One last thing before you go, Detective.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Darken my door again I'll torture what remains of your raggedy little soul until the end of days.’

  18

  Anya couldn’t be seen to be helping the law, but she’d done just that. It was in her own interests after all. The Hooded Man killing perverts on her patch was shrinking her client base, and that was bad for business. No wonder she’d offered me the veiled advice.

  She knew what I had to do, even if I didn’t. She knew I had to take control of the situation. To climb on top of things. The whole time I’d been on this case I’d been thinking I was being proactive, but the truth was I’d been following the Hooded Man’s lead from the start. If I was going to get this guy I’d need to wrest control from him, and since I already knew what his game was, I knew how to intercept it.

  I had a plan.

  Now all I needed was the means.

  I was able to visit Jazz Hands at her usual hangout since the angel Adonael was no longer snapping at my heels.

  ‘Well well,’ she said as the shop bell tinkled. ‘The prodigal son returns.’

  I didn’t have time for pleasantries, so I skipped straight to the point. ‘D’you have it?’ I asked.

  I’d phoned ahead with a special order. Something to help me put the Hooded Man out of commission once and for all.

  ‘Perhaps,’ she teased. ‘But first, what’s in it for me?’

  ‘Well, for one thing you’ll save yourself an absolutely shocking Yelp review for that dodgy grenade you lumbered me with.’

  It wasn’t a real threat. I knew I’d get what I wanted from Jazz Hands for one simple reason: because behind that moth-eaten jumper she wore was a heart the size of a family hatchback.

  ‘Here,’ she said, sliding a slim metal box across the counter. ‘I won’t ask what it’s for.’

  ‘Probably best you don’t,’ I agreed, taking the box and slipping it into my inside pocket.

  ‘Is that everything?’ she asked, eager to return to her copy of Hello! Magazine.

  ‘Just one more thing,’ I said, pointing to a nearby vase of wildflowers.

  I visited DCI Stronge at the nick. We had a rule about that. The rule was that I didn’t do it. Consequently, it came as no surprise when she angrily ushered me into her office and whipped down the venetians.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ she hissed.

  It was after hours, so besides herself there were only a couple of cleaners doing the rounds, but Stronge wasn’t one to take chances.

  ‘I need your help,’ I whispered.

  Her face didn’t soften one bit, which only made her look sexier somehow. I blamed Anya for that. It was hard to look at Kat the same way after those images the succubus had planted in my head... hard being the operative word.

  ‘What’s changed?’ Stronge asked, folding her arms.

  ‘I know how to get him now. The Hooded Man. He's working to a system, one that we can disrupt.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘Come on, Kat, help me take this guy down. Help me ruin this guy.’

  She stared at me, eyes made of flint. ‘Well, if there’s one thing you’re good at, Fletcher, it’s ruining things.’

  ‘You’re right. You’re right and I was wrong, okay? I shouldn’t have shut you out of this. The truth is, I need you just as much as you need me.’

  I wasn’t lying. I needed her cooperation to pull this off, and though Adonael had forbidden me from getting any backing from Stella, he hadn’t said anything about getting assistance from a normal.

  I produced a bunch of flowers from my pocket. ‘So, what do you say, Kat? Can we be partners again?’

  ‘Where did you get those? A graveyard?’

  ‘As a ghost, I find that notion offensive.’

  She took the flowers and pitched them into the closest thing she had to a vase; a half-full mug of coffee. ‘So, go on then, what's this big plan of yours?’

  Thank Christ, she was on board. I did what I could to stop a great big smile from spreading across my face, but only half succeeded. I took a chair and suggested she did the same. ‘Tell me this: have you ever hated someone so bad you thought about killing them?’

  ‘How about every ex I’ve ever had?’

  ‘I’m serious. I need to know if you’ve ever thought about actually sticking a knife in someone.’

  ‘No,’ she said, matter-of-factly.

  ‘Come on, Kat. Everyone has at some point. I know there’s not a day goes by that I don’t dream of pipping my killer to the post.’ I passed my phantom hand through her desk for effect.

  ‘There is… one guy,’ she said, making a face like she was experiencing a bowel movement. ‘We met at college. He got me drunk one night and... well.’

  I almost asked, “Well what?” but the look in her eyes made everything click into place. ‘Oh, Kat, I’m sorry, I—’

  ‘He didn’t get away with it. He might have though, if I hadn’t stuck my house keys in his face.’

  Figured she’d fight back. The woman had a real set of ovaries on her. ‘Well, did they do him for it?’

  She laughed. It was a beaten, sad little laugh. ‘No. They actually came after me for it in the end.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘His daddy was some big deal lawyer, and he knew the best defence his son had was a good offence. So, instead of waiting for me to press changes, the piece of shit had me written up for assault. Told the police we’d gotten into a verbal and that I’d gone at him with a knife. In the end it was my word against his, and he took me for every penny I had. Well, every penny my parents had. That’s why they live out in Gravesend and I send them the best part of my pay packet every month.’

  Same old story, the rich trampling the poor, skirting their way around forfeits and penance.

  ‘I’m starting to see why you ended up in law enforcement,’ I said. ‘Any idea what happened to the fucker? Since you graduated, I mean?’

  ‘Followed in daddy’s footsteps and went into law.’

  Of course he did.

  ‘Lives in London now. Notting Hill.’

  ‘Sounds like you’re keeping tabs on him.’

  Stronge met my gaze as if to say, “So what if I am?”

  I put my hand on hers, much like Anya had done to me in her office, though my intentions were a good deal purer. ‘I know this isn’t fair, Kat, asking you to go through all that again, but… well, maybe we can do some good with it now.’

  ‘What? How could we possibly do anything good with it?’ she asked, loud enough to give pause to one of the cleaners outside.

  ‘The Hooded Man. He goes looking for people who hold grudges. If you’re serious about wanting to do this college bloke a mischief, maybe we can use those feelings. If you can bring that hatred to the top of your thoughts, right to the surface, we’ll be halfway to luring him.’

  ‘And then what?’

&nb
sp; ‘And then I kill you.’

  19

  ‘What?’ Stronge wailed, foregoing any notion of discretion this time.

  ‘I only need you to die a little bit,’ I told her. ‘Just enough to get the bad guy's attention.’ I removed the slim metal case from my pocket and opened it to reveal a large, brass syringe. ‘I’ll do it with this,’ I explained.

  Stronge’s “death” had to look genuine. While I was capable of reaching inside people’s bodies with my ghost hand and rendering them unconscious with a squeeze to the heart, I wasn’t able to mimic death, at least not without actually causing it. No, for this murder magnet to work, I’d need to make use of Jazz Hands’ contribution.

  ‘How is killing me going to solve anything?’ asked Stronge. It was a fair question.

  ‘It’ll simulate a death state and draw the Hooded Man to your body,’ I said. ‘We already know he’s using corpses to play out vendettas, so let’s serve him up a nice, fresh one.’

  I settled on the church as the staging area for the final fight; St. Pancras Old Church, the place I’d last run into the angel Adonael. As expected, he was gone now, no longer cuffed to the ankle of the wooden Christ. In his place was a snapped-off Jesus leg, lying on the floor of the altar like he’d stepped down from the cross and onto a land mine. Poor guy. Jesus, I mean. As if he hadn’t suffered enough already.

  I guided Stronge to the altar and she sat down on its white marble surface, back propped against the baptismal font.

  ‘Where did you get that anyway?’ she asked, as I inserted the needle of the brass syringe into its accompanying vial of red liquid.

  ‘It was a gift from my friend, Jazz Hands.’

  Stronge pulled away. ‘Let me get this right, I'm supposed to trust my life to someone called “Jazz Hands”?’

  ‘Jazz Hands is just her nickname,’ I assured her. ‘Her real name is Madam Olena.’

  ‘Oh, in that case go ahead and pump my veins with your magical death juice.’

  I laughed and drew back a dose. ‘Don’t be so dramatic, I have the antidote right here.’ I shook a vial of bilious green liquid. ‘Soon as the big bad shows up I’ll shoot you full of the good stuff and we’ll take him out together.’ I set down the green vial that Jazz Hands had assured me would act as a remedy to Stronge dying.

  She rolled up her sleeve. ‘What do we do when he gets here? The Hooded Man I mean.’

  ‘Let me worry about that.’

  ‘Thanks, but if it’s all the same with you, I thought I’d bring along a little insurance policy.’

  She reached into her jacket and pulled out a gun.

  ‘Woah, you came tooled up?’ I asked, and then, ‘Wait a second, is that my shooter?’

  It was. My pearl-handled revolver, the one Jazz Hands had given me to use against the soul feaster a couple of months back. I hadn’t seen it since I was framed for murder and the boys in blue took it off me. You know, sometimes when I see a sentence like that, I realise I lead a pretty exciting life. ‘What are you doing with my pistol?’ I asked.

  ‘Smuggled it out of the station’s evidence locker,’ Stronge explained.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said, going to take it back, but she snatched it away.

  ‘This is for me,’ she said.

  ‘But you’re going to be dead on the floor.’

  ‘And I’ll still be a better shot than you.’

  Fair enough then. Something told me my puny six-shooter wasn't going to do much damage to the Hooded Man anyway.

  With that settled, it was time to get to work. ‘You remember the plan?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes. I picture that shit-bag from college as hard as I can—’

  ‘And all the unpleasant things you want to do to him—’

  ‘And then you jab me with that needle of red stuff.’

  ‘Right.’ I squeezed out a drop and gave the syringe a flick like I’d seen done on the telly. ‘So, are we ready?’

  Her face went hard as she concentrated on the man who’d wronged her, then finally she nodded. ‘Do it.’

  I stuck her with the needle as gently as I could. After a couple more stabs and what I would describe as an awful lot of profanity for a church, I eventually found Stronge’s vein. ‘It’s going to be okay,’ I told her.

  Only once I got a final nod from her—it was Stronge’s neck on the block after all—did I press down on the plunger and shoot her full of crimson death juice.

  She gasped as the poison entered her arm. Almost immediately the blood drained from her face. She made to draw a breath but it caught in her throat. Her eyes bulged wide as she began to cough and choke. It was hell to watch her suffer like that, her hands snatching at me, her fingers clawing the air like the branches of a storm-tossed tree. I made my palm solid and placed it on her rib cage to find her heart had stopped beating.

  ‘It’s okay,’ I said, as much for my state of mind as hers. ‘It’s okay.’

  Finally, she stopped thrashing and ceased trying to draw breath. Her eyes clouded over and turned skywards as her body went limp against the baptismal font.

  Stronge was dead.

  I immediately started to scan my surroundings, my eyes darting desperately around the nave for their first glimpse of the Hooded Man. I looked down the aisle. I looked behind the pews. I looked to the the vestry and pulpit. I even cast a glance to the rafters in case the bastard planned on abseiling in like some SAS soldier.

  The Hooded Man was nowhere to be seen though. I began to panic. I’d flatlined Stronge, and I couldn’t stick her with the antidote until our man had made a show. That left us with just under two minutes of play before she suffered permanent brain damage. I checked my watch. We were already at a minute-thirty.

  ‘Come on!’ I said, my voice echoing around the still empty church. ‘Show yourself.’

  A minute-forty. It was looking bad. I scrabbled for the green vial of antidote, and in my haste it slipped from my hand and struck the hard stone of the altar.

  Crack.

  The sound rang out like a distant gunshot as the vial shattered and spilled its precious contents across the marble floor.

  I watched as the green liquid dribbled down the altar steps, drip, drip, drip.

  It took me ten more seconds to find my voice.

  ‘No,’ I croaked, as the antidote ebbed away. I felt as though my heart had dropped through my pelvis—

  And then, from out of nowhere, I felt a hand on my shoulder.

  ‘Here,’ said the Hooded Man, grinning from ear to ear. ‘Let me get that for you…’

  He placed his free hand on Stronge’s chest, and a moment after that her eyes snapped open, burning white as snow.

  20

  The shock propelled me backwards, causing me to bounce painfully from the altar’s large wooden cross. The Hooded Man was up to his old tricks again, turning our surroundings super-corporeal and making them brick-solid to even the most immaterial of us.

  He dropped to his haunches, cradling Stronge in his arms and drawing her into an embrace. ‘Ahhh,’ he said, nuzzling the soft skin of her neck and taking a deep breath. ‘The perfect blend of death and vitriol. It’s a sweet smell, is it not?’

  ‘Let her go!’ I snapped.

  ‘Certainly,’ he replied.

  The Hooded Man withdrew his arms, stood, and backed away, but Stronge didn’t settle on the altar before him. Instead, she sat up robotically, found her feet and positioned herself beside him.

  He looked to me. ‘Thank you for your assistance,’ he said, ‘you’re a real lifesaver. Well, you know what I mean...’

  I looked to Stronge, but she just stood there, a silent witness. I swear I saw some life in there though. Some semblance of who she really was. I knew dead things after all, and I could see her soul hadn’t departed her body yet. If it had, her ghost would be in the vicinity. No, something in Jazz Hands’ potion had sealed Stronge’s spirit inside; locked it in good and tight. There was hope for her still, I was sure of it. A way to break the Hooded Man�
�s spell and return Stronge to the land of the living. So long as I put an end to him, I could get her back. I had to believe that. Had to.

  ‘Well,’ I said. ‘Where do we go from here?’

  ‘That depends on which of us you’re referring to,’ replied the Hooded Man. ‘The two of us will be engaging in a very short and very decisive altercation. Once that matter is brought to a close, your friend here will be making a trip to Notting Hill with that gun in her pocket.’

  ‘That’s not gonna happen,’ I replied, with way more confidence than I felt. The Hooded Man’s victims dropped dead for good once they’d completed their little pantomime, and there’d be no getting Stronge back after that. She’d end up a phantom like me, lodged between this world and the next, dead/alive.

  As I was pondering this, a fist struck me in the jaw and left me splashed on the ground like a beached flounder. The Hooded Man had closed the distance between us in a cocaine heartbeat, and was already coming at me again. While I was struggling to reorient myself he grabbed my arm, jacked it up behind my back and smashed my head into the baptismal font.

  Pow.

  I reeled backwards, staggering down the aisle, feeling like my brain had been excavated. ‘What are you?’ I slurred, punch drunk.

  He let out a brittle laugh. ‘You really don’t recognise me?’

  I scanned him up and down, taking in his black cotton hoodie and tracksuit bottoms. ‘All I see is some bloke who drives a Vauxhall Nova and lives on a council estate.’

  He offered me a rictus grin and regarded his reflection in the stained glass window. ‘I thought it was about time I updated the old duds for the modern era,’ he said, ‘but if it’s the classic look you’re after, here you go…’

  He snapped his fingers and his skin began to bubble and liquify. As he stood there, the flesh poured from his face, melting him through to the bone like a Nazi with an ark. I looked away in horror, and when I dared looked back again I found him transformed completely. Gone was the young black man in the North Face sportswear, changed now into a skeletal figure in a hooded black robe. In his hand he gripped a tall scythe.

  ‘The... Grim Reaper?’ I stammered, my voice a squeak.