“That’s what I thought,” Sherlock admitted, “but he was a hell of a mess, Pete. Blood all over his T-Shirt and his nose looked like it had been busted. I’m telling ya, something went off in that library. And that’s not all. The movie bods are getting interference on their cameras. I know. I saw this one myself. Some bloke showing up on the cameras who isn’t there for real. A man dressed all in black?”
“Johnny Cash?” Pete asked.
“Very funny,” Sherlock retorted. “I mean it, Pete. I saw it myself.”
Sceptre looked to her two friends. “What do you think?”
Kevin shrugged. Pete was more definite. “It’s come from Sherlock via Danny Corcoran. That makes it suspicious, but if Sherlock can get us in, there’s no harm looking into it.”
Finishing off his lager, Sherlock shook his head. “Can’t do it, mate, at least not while the Wicked Witches are in town. I might be able to do summat after Christmas, or you could approach the headmaster, Trent. ”
“Then the information is worthless.” Pete said and downed his own drink. He put the empty glass in front of Sherlock. “Your shout, pal.”
“Aw, come on, man. I told you, I’m skint.”
Pete checked his watch. “Time we were leaving, I think. I’ve some paint I want to keep an eye on at home. It isn’t quite dry yet.”
“Just a minute, Pete,” Kev said, and faced the security man. “Who’s standing nights on site, Sherlock?”
“Me. You think I’m gonna pay the guards time and a half for sleeping in the hut? Not likely.”
“Well, I have the perfect man for the job, tonight,” Kevin said and pointed at Pete. “Him.”
Pete almost choked. “Me?”
“Hear me out,” Kevin urged. “If you let us stand your shift tonight, Sherlock, and we can take our gear along, me and Sceptre can look into the spooks while Pete guards the film company’s tackle. Yeah?”
Sherlock rubbed a hand under his chin. “I don’t know. I mean, suppose some scroats decided to do the place over? I know Pete’s idea of justice. Break their jaws first, ask them the questions and beat ’em up again when they can’t answer because of their broken jaws.”
“It seems to me, Sherlock, that Pete is entirely suitable for the job,” Sceptre said, “and it would give us the chance to investigate your claims of a haunting.”
Pete, too, had warmed to the idea. “You have the added advantage that you know everything is safe with me, and you might still prise a ton out of Kev’s wallet if the information is sound.”
Sherlock hesitated a moment. “All right then. Turn up at the gates at nine and I’ll meet you there.”
“Good man, Sherlock. You know it makes sense.” Pete rattled the glass before the security man. “Your shout.”
Chapter Three
When the team arrived back at their shared apartment, Sceptre made for her room. She needed to talk to Fishwick and communication, from her side, was verbal. It was often both confusing and embarrassing talking to her butler while Pete and Kevin were there.
Flaking on the bed, she called out, “Fishwick.”
“Right here, Your Ladyship.”
“Fishwick, I need you to do me a favour, if you don’t mind. There is a school called the Ashdalean. I’m not sure where it is, but it’s somewhere on the west side of town. It is supposed to be haunted and we will be spending the night there. Would you check it out for me, please?”
“Of course, Milady,” Fishwick agreed, “but in truth, I have already been there, early this morning while you were sleeping.”
“You have?” Sceptre was surprised. “What prompted you to go there?”
“I spotted the glow of an angry spirit, Madam,” Fishwick reported.
“You never said anything.”
“My Lady,” the butler said, “if I were to report every angry spirit I see in this vicinity, we would be here for hours. I tend to report only those that are critical to your comings and goings.”
It made absolute sense to her. Fishwick had tried many times over the years to describe the Spirit Plane, but with no frame of reference, all Sceptre had were vague impressions. She had, however, learned that while most of the deceased went straight into The Light, there were many hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, who had unfinished business in the real world, and stayed on the Spirit Plane instead. Ashdale was a town of perhaps 150,000 people and logically, there would be many spirits, some sad, some bitter, some outright angry, in the area.
“Would you mind popping back over there,” she asked, “and checking the place out again? See if he’s still there?”
“Very good, Madam.”
Through talking with her butler, she rolled off the bed, picked up her coat and put it on. After letting her two friends in on her plans, she climbed into her Fiat Punto and drove out of Nineveh Crescent, onto the ring road circling the Cranley Estate, heading for the public library.
Despite her privileged upbringing, Sceptre did not dwell on the misfortunes of the Rand-Epping family. She remembered Rand-Epping Hall, the North Yorkshire family seat for over 300 years, only as a facet of her childhood, and had been brought up in York. After her father’s death, she and her mother had struggled financially, a battle which only eased when her mother was killed in a motorway accident, and the insurance settled all debts, leaving the 19-year old Sceptre with enough to finish her studies.
Throughout all those years, the only constant in her life had been Fishwick … until she met Pete and Kevin.
It was an unlikely triumvirate: an ex-police officer with a penchant for hitting first and asking questions later, coupled with a roving eye for females, and his best friend, an overweight, self-employed food and tobacco addict best described as a ducker and diver, and she, the titled lady, a graduate historian working 20 hours a week as a tutor in history at Ashdale college. But it was an irregular triangle bonded in firm friendship and absolute trust. Pete had never hidden his desire for her, but he did not press so far as to irritate her, Kevin hid behind her and Pete, but he would never be slow to come to their aid if they needed him, and for her part, Sceptre would fight tooth and nail for both men, even if she disapproved of their actions.
And if the boys had introduced her to a seamier side of life, Sceptre knew she should be grateful for it. She had been educated at an exclusive academy for young ladies. Despite the family’s ailing financial fortunes, her father, a Colonel in the North Yorkshire Light Infantry, had nevertheless insisted that some traditions be maintained, and money had been set aside in trust to pay for her education. But that education did not allow for mobsters, drug dealers, porn merchants and the general detritus of society’s underclass.
The three-cornered hat worked on other levels, too; particularly when it came to the paranormal.
Pete was an out and out sceptic. He believed in only those things he could see, touch and experience, and while he did not dismiss the possibilities out of hand, he observed events with a detached eye that kept her and Kevin away from their wilder flights of fancy.
Kevin had some slight psychic abilities. He had sensed many of the spirits at Melmerby Manor, and the ghost of Steven Bilks had concentrated on Kevin as a channel. Sceptre always felt that the only thing holding Kevin back was his innate pusillanimity. Not a coward, he was not the bravest man in the world, either.
And what of her, Lady Concepta Rand-Epping, Countess of Marston?
Turning into the library, she viewed her own efforts with disappointment. Her only true contact was with Fishwick. She had impressions of other ethereal events and manifestations (Bilks had possessed her body briefly at Melmerby Manor, and she had met Fishwick for a few fleeting seconds when she ‘died’) but beyond that, she had experienced little. Her determination to bring awareness of the Spirit Plane to a wider audience, a decision she first made when her mother died, had come to nothing. Seven years on, at the age of 26, she was no closer to her objective.
*****
Five miles away, on the other
side of town, Fishwick hovered above the hive of activity that was the exterior of the Ashdalean.
The two girls were dancing in front of the grand entrance, while their noisy music blared from free-standing speakers. To Fishwick it was as incomprehensible as a baroque symphony, only less pleasant on the ear. People milled around but he noticed that no one stood between the girls and the cameras. He knew nothing about producing movies, but logic told him that the camera operators needed to keep everyone out of the shot. Phil Dunstan, the American director watched on his tiny monitor, occasionally leaning over to say something the young woman sat to his right, whom Fishwick assumed to be some kind of secretary.
Ignoring them and concentrating on the building, he noticed that the fiery ball of energy he had met during the morning was no longer to be seen. Perhaps, then, Her Ladyship would be safe coming here tonight.
The school reminded him of Rand-Epping Hall, up in North Yorkshire, where he had been privileged to serve the family. Although the stone of the Ashdalean was blackened with age thanks to its situation in what had been an industrial environment, it had the same crenellated roof line, with the roof behind the retaining wall and battlements flat, sporting four flagpoles. Three of them bore standards: the Union Flag, the Cross of St George, and the crest of the Ashdalean School. The fourth flagpole (which at Rand-Epping Hall had flown the Colonel’s Regimental banner) was barren. The roof itself was marked out with various lines, which looked to Fishwick like a basketball court, but there were no baskets, only a large diameter circle made of a grey polymer material, bolted to the roof in the centre.
Swooping down into the school, Fishwick worked his way quickly through the empty classrooms and found nothing of interest. After the upper rooms and a check on the library, where a glazier was busy repairing the damaged door, he dropped straight down into the chapel.
A sense of evil came to him. Despite almost a century on the Spirit Plane, Fishwick did not know the mechanism by which he could detect these things, but he was rarely wrong. The evil did not come from here, in the chapel, but from below. He dropped through the floor and found himself in the crypt, a long, narrow alley that twisted and turned under the school, recessed at regular intervals, each alcove containing a stone coffin. A cursory reading of the plaques above the coffins revealed many of them to be former headmasters. The feeling of great evil was stronger here, but despite the spirits hanging around the area, he could not pinpoint it.
Talking to some of those spirits did not help, either, for the simple reason that most of them ignored him. Fishwick understood. For them to hang about this place meant they had a great attachment to it in life, and he was an interloper; an entity who had not know this place in life and therefore had no business here.
Nevertheless, the strength of evil worried him, and he was relieved to be away from the place, returning to Her Ladyship.
She was easy to find. For Fishwick, her aura stood out no matter where she was. He could find her amongst a Wembley football crowd on Cup Final day. He joined her now as she drove home from the library, and after contacting her, waited until she pulled into the roadside before reporting to her. Fishwick did not like to distract her while she was driving.
“Evil, you say?” Sceptre asked when he told of his discoveries.
“Yes, Milady. Evil.”
“But you can’t pinpoint it?”
If he had been able, Fishwick would probably have shaken his head. “No, Madam. All I can say is it comes from somewhere in the crypt, but as I said, there are a number of spirits down there, clinging on to whatever it is they long for from their past lives, and the source of evil has cleverly disguised itself amongst them.”
Sceptre spent a moment or two thinking about it, and then asked, “So how are we to uncover this evil?”
“I don’t know that we should want to, Your Ladyship, but if he moves, he will inevitably single himself out and make himself known to us.”
“Thank you, Fishwick. I shall make sure that Peter and Kevin are informed.” She put the car into gear again, checked her mirrors and pulled away. “Not that I think they’ll take much notice.”
But when they arrived at the flat, both Sceptre and Fishwick were surprised to learn that Pete was out.
“Got a call,” Kevin explained. “From Sonny Briscoe, no less.”
“Who?” Sceptre asked.
“The Wicked Witches. They wanna speak to him. He’s gone to see them at the Ashdalean.”
*****
Pete ambled through the forest of people working in and around the front entrance of the school, his interest taken with this camera, that lighting rig, this sound boom, that monitor. It was a world away from police work, two worlds away from the footslogging of chasing up divorce evidence, insurance evidence and bad debts that were the mainstays of the private eye, and he could understand the lure of it, even though it did not interest him personally. His father had been a cop and he had never wanted to be anything other than a cop.
After clearing his way through security and picking up a visitor pass, he was directed to the Wicked Witches’ trailer, as nondescript as all the others when he arrived there and rapped on the door.
A moment later, Briscoe opened it.
Even though they had never met personally, Pete knew of Briscoe’s history as a gangster and drug dealer. It did not trouble him as much as his presence obviously troubled Briscoe, whose usually warm eyes were reduced to tiny points of unmitigated anger.
“Brennan,” Pete said. “You asked me to come here.”
“Get yourself in here, and remember who you’re dealing with,” Briscoe ordered.
Suppressing the many comments that sprang into his mind, Pete walked past him and took in his surroundings. The Wicked Witches may have been the new wonders of the pop world, but they still lived as if they were two young girls from an Ashdale council estate. The caravan was strewn with items of female apparel, a portable TV played to itself in the corner, there were cups and glasses scattered about the place, and on a foldaway table was Haz’ laptop computer surrounded by three mobile phones.
She sat on a couch by the table, and waved Pete onto the settee opposite. Briscoe stayed in the background.
“You know who you’re talking to?” she opened.
Time, Pete decided, to bring her down a couple of rungs. “Yes. One of two ignorant overpaid, under-worked little tarts from South Ashdale who, if they hadn’t been in the right place at the right time, would probably have been working the checkouts at Sainsbury’s.”
Haz glowered. “I could have you beaten black and blue for talking to me like that.”
Pete aimed a finger sideways at her manager. “By him? You can send Briscoe and another three like him, if you want. I’ll chew ’em up and the bits I spit out won’t be enough to feed your dad’s racing pigeons. If he’s the best you can do, you’d better back off now.”
“You …”
Pete cut her off. “Listen, lady, I’m not impressed with your fame and fortune. You may have a short memory, but I don’t. I still haven’t forgotten the time I busted you for possession. And I see you haven’t changed your habit, have you?” He lifted the magazine under which were a couple of wraps. “I used to be Detective Constable Brennan of Ashdale CID.” He aimed a finger at Briscoe. “And I know all about his antics in South Manchester before he turned up you and your foul-mouthed sister warbling for your drug money in the Crown and Anchor. So before we go any further, you can cut the big, ‘I am’, crap, and get to the point. You rang me. My time doesn’t come cheap. So what do you want?”
Briscoe paced like a cat bursting to get to the prey.
Haz’ irritated features calmed. “You’re right, I don’t remember you and you look too young to be a cop.”
“Don’t be fooled,” Pete said. “I joined the police when I was eighteen, and when I made CID, my arrest record was the best. I’d be with them still if I hadn’t battered some smartarse from higher up the ranks.” He paused and laid his eye
on Briscoe. “Now what do you want?”
It was as if he had said nothing. “You any good with missing persons?” Haz asked.
Pete shook his head. “Nope.”
She clucked. “You just said you were in CID.”
“I was, but we didn’t do missing persons unless they were stiffs.”
She drummed her fingers on the table. “Well you must know how to investigate.”
“If you’re looking for someone, I can poke around, ask questions. Now who is it?”
“Gus Nordqvist.”
“Never heard of him.” Pete raised his eyebrows inviting further explanation.
“Gus,” Haz explained, “was our roadie, Swedish guy, lived over here for years, and he had a thing for my sister.”
A gleam came to Pete’s eyes. “Naughty.”
“Not naughty. Love.”
Pete guffawed. “Love? That selfish little bag wouldn’t know the meaning of the word.”
“You’re wrong,” Haz yelled and threw one of her phones across the room. Briscoe picked it up as she carried on. “Nag loved him. He’s the reason she’s so miserable. He upped sticks and walked out on all of us, walked out on Nag.”
Pete shrugged. “Men do it all the time. He probably felt he was getting in too deep, so he decided to cut and run while the cutting and running was good.”
“You are not listening to me, Brennan.” She raised her voice again. “Nag loved him and he loved her. Something went wrong and for her sake, I need someone to look into it. You claim to be a private eye, you say you were a cop, so look into it.”
Pete thought it over. Kevin was the expert on negotiation. He could probably screw another two or three thousand pounds out of Haz. But Kevin was back home, planning a ghost hunt he probably couldn’t handle. “All right,” he said, “here’s what I’m prepared to do. You want me to look for him, and I will, but I want two grand, plus expenses, whether I find him or not.”
A Spookies Compendium Page 36
