A Spookies Compendium

by David Robinson

  McKinley’s ears coloured red. Catching up with them in time to hear the exchange, Sceptre leapt to his defence.

  “Pete, why can’t you accept that he may be genuinely interested in our work?”

  Pete turned and carried on to the cafeteria. “Because I know him. Three hick ghost hunters? Not McKinley’s bag. He’d have given it to a junior.”

  He moved into the servery, switched on the kettle and gathered cups for fresh tea. While he prepared them, he eyed McKinley. “Well?”

  The reporter gave him a lopsided grin. “You may be right, Brennan, but I’m saying nothing. We journalists never reveal too much.”

  Pete had been getting steadily angrier since the exchange with Sceptre in the attics. Kevin had noticed it. So, too, had Sceptre, but McKinley seemed ignorant of or impervious to it. Now, the ex-policeman suddenly turned on the reporter.

  “And we ex-cops have ways of making you tell.”

  “Don’t push it, Brennan. You may impress him and her…” He jerked his thumb sideways at Kevin and Sceptre. “… but it doesn’t work with me…” McKinley trailed off as Pete advanced furiously towards him. “All right, all right,” McKinley capitulated. “I’ll tell you.”

  Pete stopped and waited, the other two hung in the background, also waiting for the reporter to explain himself.

  “I got a call from a contact. I won’t say who.” He gave a weak smile. “I told you, I like to keep my sources secret. Anyway, he told me about you and the tape of a voice, supposedly from beyond the grave. When I got to see him, he mentioned that it was all linked with the disappearance of a consignment of pirate DVDs, and that’s what I’m interested in. The police never mentioned them, but you did, and they are the reason Bilko was killed, aren’t they?”

  Pete turned back to the kettle. “No comment.” He smiled cynically. The reporter grinned.

  “I’ll find out, you know.”

  “Not from me, you won’t.”

  McKinley took Sceptre’s elbow and led her towards a table.

  “And don’t you tell him anything, Sceptre,” Pete called after them. His words fell on deaf ears, and he assumed she was still annoyed at his interpretation of her seizure.

  With a wary eye on them, Kevin walked round the service counter to stand at Pete’s side, and kept his voice to something just above a whisper. “Why aren’t you telling him, Pete?”

  Pete too kept his voice down. “Because I don’t know where he’s getting his information. Aside from Bent Benny, that is. Anyway, you know what a prat he is, and I hate his guts.”

  “Because he’s scored with Sceptre?” Kevin inquired.

  Pete shook his head. “Judging by the look on her face when they came down the stairs just after I got here, I’d say he scored an own goal with Sceptre.”

  Kevin looked across at the reporter and their partner, engrossed in conversation. “He seems to be doing all right now.”

  “Just shut up about it, Kev. I’m telling him nothing.”

  “But I don’t get it.” Kevin complained again.

  Pete heaved a sigh. “Did you tell him about the DVDs?”

  Kevin shook his head. “No.”

  “Neither did I,” said Pete. “So where did he get it from?”

  “You said it,” Kevin pointed out. “Bent Benny.”

  “And did you tell our Mr. Stringer?” Pete pressed.

  Kevin shrugged. “Can’t remember. Don’t think so. There again, McKinley could be using anyone. Sherlock knew about them, and you know what a big mouth he’s got. He coulda …”

  “It was a rhetorical question, you donk,” Pete berated him. “I know you didn’t tell Bent Benny.”

  “You mean historical.”

  Pete shook his head sadly. “I forgot English was never your strong point. Kev, we have to ask ourselves where he found out about the DVDs.”

  “Johnny and Jimmy Tate?”

  “I dunno,” Pete admitted, “and until I find out, I’m saying nothing to him. That five grand is as good as ours, pal, once I can open Wilcox up a bit further, and I don’t wanna let a berk like McKinley screw it up for us.”

  “So what are you gonna do about Wilcox?” Kevin asked.

  Pete shrugged and poured boiling water into four cups. “Apply some pressure.” He grinned. “In fact, I think I’m gonna enjoy it.”

  Kevin picked up two cups, Pete brought the other two and they joined Sceptre and McKinley at their table by the computer set-up.

  But a barrier seemed to have opened up between the two sets. After her disagreement with him in the attic, Pete sensed that Sceptre preferred the company of McKinley. Telling himself she was doing it just to annoy him, Pete dropped the two teas on their table and joined Kevin across the aisle.

  “Pete,” Kevin whispered, “now that you know Wilcox is behind it all, why aren’t you doing something? You know, going to the filth or beating him up?”

  Pete cast an envious glance across the aisle at Sceptre and McKinley’s tête-à-tête. Answering Kevin, he kept his voice down. “Because Wilcox isn’t behind it. He’s only the crankshaft, not the engine. It’s this Jay character. He organised the theft.”

  “And you reckon that this Jay character exists, do you?” Kevin sounded doubtful.

  Pete shrugged. “How else would Wilcox know about the DVDs and where to get his hands on them? Look Kev, Wilcox is a two-bit gangster. Pushing dope, flogging iffy booze, running gambling rackets, loan-sharking. Those are Wilcox’s fields, not flogging pirate DVDs. Even if he knew about them, he wouldn’t be interested, other than maybe selling the information to a third party. He admits he took them, but it had to be for cash. He was transport and storage, nothing more.”

  Kevin accepted Pete’s analysis. “And you reckon Wilcox was telling the truth, do you? That he really doesn’t know who Jay is?”

  “No, I think he was lying, but only time and a good, old-fashioned stakeout will prove that.” Pete grinned with avarice. “Once I know who Jay is, I can wrap the whole thing up, deliver Bilko’s killer to Locke and pick up the five grand from Tate.”

  *****

  Across the table, Sceptre eyed the close discussion between the two old friends and felt a stab of jealousy rush through her at the thought that Kevin and Pete had something to discuss which excluded her.

  “Why do you bother with these two bums?” asked McKinley.

  His question irritated her. “I told you before. Both Pete and Kevin were very good to me when I first moved to Ashdale. They gave me a roof over my head and offered to help me with my work.”

  McKinley was dismissive. Keeping his voice really low to ensure Pete could not hear him, he said, “You owe them nothing, and they’ll hold you back. Keeley is a crook, and my experience of Brennan is that he helps those he thinks will let him help himself later on.” He narrowed his eyes at her. “In the same way you wouldn’t let me help myself earlier tonight.”

  Sceptre recalled their passionate embrace and the way she had stopped him. “I told you, I’m not that kind of girl.”

  McKinley stared pointedly at her blouse and Sceptre recalled, with a blush, the way it had been open when she returned to her body. “You sure came on like that kind of girl upstairs, and you were almost advertising like that kind of girl when Brennan saved your life.”

  Maintaining a stern, almost matriarchal face, a trick her mother had taught her many years previously, she said, “And you wonder why I bother with Pete and Kevin? Having my blouse open came about because Pete was saving my life. He’s reliable, Mike, and so, too, is Kevin.”

  Leaning even closer to her, he ignored her mild reproof and pressed his argument. “Sceptre, you and I could be a winning team. They’re a pair of losers, but I’m not. I’m a respected investigative reporter, and I think we could really hit it big together. The reporter and the medium. We could expose the cons, follow up the real hauntings, put out stuff that would really make Joe Public think twice about spooks and stuff. Take the world by storm.”

  �
�In the Ashdale Evening Chronicle?” Sceptre was still smarting from his inane comment on her advertising like that kind of girl.

  “No, not the Ashdale Evening Chronicle. I can freelance. I have contacts …”

  “Shush.”

  The instruction took McKinley by surprise because it was not whispered. She had raised her voice so that Kevin and Pete could hear too, and they all fell silent, listening to the night.

  Outside, the wind had dropped, but there was a faint rasping, like someone breathing in and out. Kevin began to sweat, the glisten of perspiration lighting his forehead in the dim glow of their lamps. Pete and McKinley held their breath, listening.

  The voice came in faint at first, but gradually gained in strength and volume, coming from all directions, enveloping them, the words spoken through hissing, laboured breathing, its message clear.

  “WIGJAM... WIGJAM... WIGJAM...”

  *****

  “I told you I’d heard it!” Kevin cried. “Wigjam!”

  “Quiet,” Pete ordered, and they listened once more to the voice. He stood up and began to wander around the room, head cocked first to one side, then the other, trying to locate the source of the sound.

  At the table, Sceptre made no effort to keep her voice down. “Fishwick?”

  “Madam?” The voice of her butler sounded in her head.

  “Fishwick, is the source of that sound on the spirit plane?”

  “Not to my knowledge, Madam.”

  “Not to your knowledge? What is that supposed to mean?” Sceptre was positively indignant over her butler’s response.

  Fishwick did not react to her tone, but answered matter-of-factly. “None of the spirits haunting this house are making that sound, but there may be other spirits here not native to the house which I have not noticed.”

  “So, it isn’t Steven Bilks?” she demanded.

  “No, Madam. He is in the background, sulking after his failed attempt to possess you.” Once again, Fishwick’s reply was factual and unemotional.

  Coming back to her fellow investigators in the cafeteria, Sceptre passed on her butler’s remarks. Kevin breathed a sigh of relief, Pete scowled and continued his efforts to locate the sound.

  McKinley laughed. “You really believe all this guff, don’t you?”

  She frowned. In that instant, whatever efforts McKinley had made to ingratiate himself with her were negated. “I speak the truth. Nothing more.”

  “And I don’t need her ghostly butler to tell me it’s nothing to do with ghosts,” Pete declared.

  “What do you mean?” demanded Sceptre.

  “How many ghosts do you know that know how to use a PA system?” Pete gestured vaguely at the four corners of the room.

  In each corner, set high up, near the ceiling, were small, discreet speakers.

  “Not very big, are they?” commented McKinley.

  “Size isn’t everything,” said Kevin with a pointed stare at both Pete and the reporter. “They may be tiny, but they could still push out a coupla hundred watts per channel.”

  Pete looked satisfied, Sceptre crestfallen. With the noise of the voice providing a backdrop, Pete said triumphantly, “I told you someone was taking the mickey with us all along. Now where will this be operated from?”

  “I haven’t a clue,” said Sceptre miserably. “We’ve checked the entire house and the stables. There’s no one here but us.”

  Light dawned in Pete’s eyes. “No. There’s one area we’ve never checked.” A slow smile crossed his features. “The private apartments.” He glanced across the grand hall.

  “Pete, no,” urged Sceptre. “We were told we couldn’t go into the private rooms. Jonathan Melmerby could withdraw permission if he finds out.”

  Pete dismissed her with an angry, backward wave and strode out of the cafeteria, into the entrance hall, where the noise of the rasping voice was even louder. Across the hall, the panelled door to the apartments was roped off. Pete marched to it.

  “It’s locked,” Sceptre protested, hurrying to his side, “and we don’t have a key. You’ll have to break in and ...”

  She trailed off as Pete removed the rope, turned the doorknob and pushed the door open. Once inside, they found that the noise from the entrance hall diminished into no more than a muted, indecipherable mumble.

  The private apartments were just as lavish as those open to visitors, but the furnishings were more modern. Two doors led off in different directions, one to the dining room and kitchen, the other to a narrow hall and the bedrooms. Pete checked them all quickly. In the final room, a small, windowless apartment, he found what he was looking for.

  “Now, tell me it’s Bilko,” he said, gesturing at a modest, computer-driven PA system.

  Kevin came in, and cast his expert eye over it. A small control board held marked switches for speakers all over the house, and every one of them was in the ‘on’ position. The computer screen was lit, its screensaver running. When Kevin hit a key, it disappeared, replaced by a sight familiar to him: the display of an active media player. In the centre of the screen in its own window sat a view of the cafeteria where their own computer monitored the house.

  Kevin sat before it, his fingers dancing over the keyboard. In the far distance, all sounds in the hall ceased. He fiddled once more with the keyboard, redirecting the audio output, then restarted the track. From the computer’s built-in speakers came the sound.

  “WIGJAM... WIGJAM...”

  “Did they use the manor’s CCTV security system too?” asked Sceptre, pointing to the image of the cafeteria.

  Kevin made a study of the links. “Curiously enough, no. Probably couldn’t trace the line from the cafeteria back to here.” He tapped the screen. “This view comes from a webcam, or some camera in there that they’ve used as a webcam, and they’ve been driving the whole thing over the Internet. Whoever’s linked to this machine simply sends the sounds. While the PA speakers are switched on, it’ll play all over the house.” He called up the file list and found a track entitled Breath. He played it, and from the machine’s speakers came the sound of breathing he had heard earlier. “They saw me alone in the cafeteria earlier,” he grumbled, “and took advantage.”

  “Can you find out who’s behind it?” McKinley asked.

  Again Kevin hit the keys, his fingers darting across the keyboard with unerring accuracy.

  “One or two tracking cookies,” he muttered, scanning through the Internet Options menu, “but they’re probably from the ISP. Nothing that I recognise. Ten to one they were watching over the camera and cut their connection when they realised we’d rumbled them.”

  Behind him, Pete fumed. “Whoever it is, they’ve been watching us all the time. That explains how they knew when to play ghosts the other night.”

  Kevin was doubtful. “Could be, but how would they have known to watch the café the other night?” He scowled at McKinley. “After his rag printed reports about Bilko’s drum a few nights back, they might have twigged that they could watch us tonight, but not two days ago. Even the way news spreads in this town, they couldn’t have moved that quickly.” Abruptly, he switched the subject back. “Pete, this has to be one of Bent Benny’s set-ups. He’s a wiz at putting these things together, and as far as I know, he was the only other person in Ashdale, apart from us, who had heard the wigjam thing. He listened to that tape we took him, and as we know…” Again he looked at the reporter. “…he made at least one copy.”

  Pete mulled over the information. “It makes a sort of sense. The noise we’ve just been listening to is an enhanced copy of the tape you took to him, but why would Bent Benny try to scare us off?”

  McKinley chuckled. “He may be trying to scam me, not you. As you’ve guessed, he was the one who tipped me off to the connection between this place and the missing DVDs. Maybe he was trying to persuade me the Melmerby ghosts took them.”

  “No,” Sceptre argued, “it doesn’t make sense. How did Benny get in to set this all up?” She gestured aroun
d at the house. “He would need keys to this place and there’s only the one set as far as I know, and they have been with me, apart from the time the police had them. Pete, could one of your former colleagues have…?”

  Pete cut her off. “No way. I told you before, Locke is an honest cop. A pain in the arse, but an honest pain in the arse. This was a murder scene and he would not have let those keys out of his sight.”

  Sceptre nodded. “Then there’s more to this than meets the eye.”

  “I agree,” Pete said, “but I still don’t believe it’s anything to do with ghosts. As for getting in here, Benny wouldn’t have too much trouble. He’s like Kev. Got more contacts than the printed circuit board in that computer. I’ll see Benny in the morning. In the meantime, Kev, shut that thing down and let’s see if we can find the camera in the restaurant.”

  Kevin busied himself for a moment with closing down the computer, and they retraced their steps back to the cafeteria, where Kevin once more took centre stage, ambling round the servery, carefully studying the walls above it.

  “It must be somewhere here. The angle clearly showed the windows.” He waved at the panoramic view.

  Sceptre flicked the restaurant lights on. “Then we should be able to see it.”

  “Don’t bet on it,” said Kevin. “These things can be the size of your little finger. Smaller, even.”

  They all settled on the area around the ranges as the most likely spot for the camera to be secreted and began looking.

  “Madam,” said Fishwick, “there is a curious device like a tiny black billiard ball above the ranges, next to the cooker ventilation hood.”

  “Thank you, Fishwick,” said Sceptre and reported his findings to the others.

  The moment she guided them, Kevin spotted it. In deference to Pete’s greater agility, he allowed his ex-policeman chum to climb onto the frying range, pick up the device and yank the wires free.

  Jumping down, Pete tossed it to Kevin, who took the tiny camera back to the table where he studied it under the close lighting of their lanterns. It was the size of a novelty pencil sharpener, round and bulbous, its fisheye lens bulged out of a black, polymer casing. On the back was a tiny label.