A Spookies Compendium

by David Robinson

  He shot through the wall and into the outside air where the snow was falling heavily on the town centre. If he could tempt Pete out here, there were any number of ways in which he might break free of his bindings. But how could he attract the determined but obdurate ex-policeman’s attention?

  He looked at the door and chuckled to himself. “Perfect.”

  *****

  The moment she emerged from the ladies, Sceptre was apprehended by Wesley. There was a brief struggle and she too was secured, her wrists bound firmly behind her back. From there, they were frogmarched back to the café.

  “Fishwick,” she called out. “Help us, Fishwick.”

  Wesley gave her a puzzled look. “Who or what is Fishwick?”

  She glowered. “My butler.”

  Wesley laid a grim stare on Torchy. “I thought you said there would only be three?”

  “That’s what I was told. Brennan, Keeley and the tart.”

  “Then you were told wrong,” Sceptre promised. “There are in fact only two of us, and my butler, Fishwick.”

  “You, him and your butler.” Wesley made a point of counting the names on the fingers of his left hand. He grinned at her. “That, my dear young lady, makes three.”

  Sceptre shook her head. “Two of us alive and Fishwick, who, sad to say, has been dead for ninety years. He is a ghost, as you will discover when he comes to my aid.”

  They laughed. Long and loud.

  “Listen darlin’,” said Torchy, “I ain’t scared of no one living, so I ain’t gonna lose any sleep over a dead butler. There are three of you. You, Keeley and Brennan, and now that we’ve got all of you, it’s time to torch the place …”

  “Hang on, Torchy, old boy,” said Wesley. “They’ve had those cameras running for ages, now. They’ll have caught my performance and your presence. The old bill will have us before Boxing Day.”

  “Not if we take it all with us, Al.” He grinned at Sceptre and Kevin. “Well now, as I said, we have all three of you and it won’t be long before we have to go. We’re due at a Christmas party soon.”

  Sceptre had been sending urgent messages to Kevin with her eyes and facial expressions. As usual, he failed to grasp the subtleties, and she resorted to more direct methods. “Three of us?” she declared. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. There are only two of us you can apprehend. Isn’t that right, Kevin?”

  “Well there’s … ouch.” Kevin howled as her foot hit his ankle. “Yeah, just us two. And Fishwick.”

  “They can’t take Fishwick,” Sceptre pointed out.

  Torchy smiled evilly. “And what about Pete Brennan?”

  Kevin, who at last had cottoned on to Sceptre’s subliminal messages, remained airily casual. “Pete? Haven’t seen him for months.”

  Torchy laughed. “Then how come we’ve got him tied up in Dimmock’s furniture shop on the east gallery?”

  Kevin’s face fell, but lit again when Sceptre spoke. “Oh, you’ve seen the ghost?” she said. “The resident ghost, I mean, not my butler.”

  Torchy and Wesley exchanged smug glances. “For the last time, missus, that ain’t no ghost. That’s Pete Brennan. I know. I slugged him.”

  Sceptre gave him a mock smile. “Well, please yourself, but I know about this place. I know it’s really haunted.”

  “By a dead ghost,” added Kevin.

  “As opposed to a live one?” asked Wesley stripping off the rubber facemask he had worn.

  “The haunting of this market hall is the very reason we’re here,” Sceptre assured the two thugs.

  “Listen to me,” Wesley pressed. “Your friend Brennan is tied up in that furniture shop and when the hall goes up, he’s going up with you.”

  “Just as a matter of interest,” asked Sceptre, diverting their attention so she could struggle at the ropes binding her wrists, “why are you burning down the market hall?”

  “Dimmock,” explained Torchy. “His missus owns the furniture shop and it ain’t doing too well. He asked us to torch it for the insurance.”

  “Well, can’t you do it later?” demanded Kevin. “Say tomorrow. When we’re not here?”

  “Oh no, Keeley, you’ve gotta be here.” Torchy sat opposite them and drank from a mug of tea. “Ugh. What’s that made with?”

  “It’s chamomile tea,” said Sceptre. “It calms you down.”

  “Tastes like it’s made with ash,” complained the thug.

  “Well,” Kevin admitted, “I might have dropped a fag end in it.”

  “You were going to tell us why we have to be here,” Sceptre reminded them, giving up the unequal struggle with the ropes. They were fastened far too securely for her to release them.

  “Simple,” said Torchy, putting the cup to one side. “Dimmock wants this placed fried. He hates working here, his missus ain’t making money. He knew you were here tonight and everyone in the world knows what a dipstick Keeley is. He’s the patsy. This place will be burned to the ground with you three in it, and it will be assumed that Keeley started it with a rogue fag.”

  “Typical,” tutted Kevin. “I get blamed for everything, even when I’m dead.”

  “Except,” Sceptre objected, “as I keep telling you, there are only two of us here, not three. I don’t know what you think you saw in Dimmock’s but it wasn’t Pete Brennan.”

  “Not a very convincing performance, young lady,” observed Wesley. “Dimmock warned us that you were a bit airy-fairy.” He stripped off his overcoat and began to remove a microphone pack.

  “What’s that?” Kevin asked.

  “Hooked into the hall’s PA system,” said Wesley, “so we could scare you.” He pressed the switch and spoke into it. “Oh Kevin ... help me Kevin.” The words boomed around the hall. “See?” Those words, too, echoed around the hall, and so did his laughter before he switched the microphone off.

  “There is one thing I don’t understand,” said Kevin.

  “Only one?” asked Wesley looking snootily down his nose. “I would have thought there are a great many things you don’t understand, Mr Keeley. The principles of jet propulsion, the Common Agricultural Policy, Schroedinger’s cat—”

  Kevin frowned. “What about Schroedinger’s cat?”

  “An exercise in quantum physics,” said Wesley. “Basically, there was no way of knowing whether the cat was dead or alive without opening the box.”

  “Easy,” declared Kevin. “Drop a tin of cat food in and if it doesn’t get eaten, the moggie’s dead.”

  “You can’t do that without opening the box.”

  “No thanks, I’ll take the money instead.”

  “Shut up,” snapped Torchy. “What was it you didn’t understand, Keeley?”

  “How did you get that little musical Santa to work earlier?” Kevin asked. “You were nowhere near the ladies loo then.”

  They frowned. “Musical Santa? What musical Santa?” asked Wesley.

  “When you scared the hell out of me near the ladies,” Kevin reminded them. “Not just now. Earlier.”

  “That wasn’t us,” objected the actor.

  “Well it wasn’t me and it wasn’t my butler,” Sceptre shrugged.

  “Must have been your mate, Brennan,” said Torchy.

  Sceptre stared blankly. “What mate Brennan?”

  “That’s it,” snapped Torchy. “Come on Al. We’ll take ’em up there and show ’em their great hero, hog tied.”

  *****

  Fishwick had watched with interest from the Spirit Plane. Once more, it was tempting to intervene, especially with the mistress tied up like that, but he refrained. While the two thugs were so close to Her Ladyship, it could be dangerous for her. Better to wait until they were about other business and then he could help.

  As she and Kevin were marched from the café to the furniture shop, he followed and whispered, “I’m here, Madam, waiting only the right opportunity.”

  “Fishwick,” she said, so everyone could hear, “there is no need for you to whisper. These clods
cannot hear you.”

  “Do not antagonise them, Madam,” her butler advised. “I cannot free your wrists yet and I may not be able to fight them off alone.”

  *****

  In fact, Torchy and Wesley ignored her goads, and bundled her and Kevin along the east gallery to Dimmock’s Furnishers, where they were pushed through the door and into the shop.

  “There you are,” said Torchy, gesturing at the settee. “Pete Brennan.”

  Sceptre smiled smugly at him. “Where?”

  Torchy and Wesley whirled and stared at the settee. There was nothing and no one there.

  *****

  Pete shivered as he worked on the fire escape outside the building, using the iron handrail to cut through his bonds. Snow fell heavily, adding to the three inches already covering the town centre. The fairy lights suspended from street lamps danced in a wind which whipped the snow into a blinding blizzard, and across the square, the lights of the pubs were warm and welcoming. At the parish church, where the clock showed 11:30, people were already arriving for midnight mass and the sound of a choir singing carols came to him.

  Left alone in the shop, he had been searching for a knife or any sharp edge he could use to cut the ropes, when there came a noise from the rear room. On investigating, he found the emergency exit swaying back and forth. Without questioning what would cause it to do so, he guessed that Torchy and Wesley had entered through the door and bent on burning down the place, they had left it unlocked to give them a quick escape

  Pete had stepped out onto an iron fire escape and was busily working through his bonds, using the roughened surface of the handrail to fray the ropes. It was painstakingly slow, but he was almost there, driven on by a single obsession. He had to get back into the market hall to save his two friends.

  The rope began to fray. Pete exerted more pressure, rubbed against the rail.

  *****

  On finding the furniture store empty, Torchy overcame his astonishment with a few muttered curses, and when Sceptre gave him an “I told you so,” look, he turned angrily on her. “Give me any grief, lady,” he warned, “and you won’t see the fire. I’ll top you now.” He glared at his compatriot. “Let’s get them out of here.”

  “Where are we taking them?” asked Wesley. “Back to the café?”

  “Oh sure. Where they can get to knives? We’ll tie ’em up near the ladies where we found ’em.”

  Kevin and Sceptre were bundled out of the shop and back down to the ground floor, along the aisles to the ladies, where they were placed back to back either side of an upright, iron stanchion, and a rope passed around their joint waists to anchor them there.

  With that done, the two thugs conferred.

  “This is nuts. I tied a real bloke up in that shop, not a bloody spook,” Torchy complained.

  “Can we ever be certain of the things we perceive with our inadequate senses?” Wesley intoned.

  Torchy frowned. “What are you on about?”

  “Sorry, old man,” apologised the actor. “It was an advertisement I made for German lager.”

  “Will you get real?” snapped Torchy. “If I tied a ghost up, what happened to the rope I used? That wasn’t from the other world. We brought it with us.”

  “Then he must have cut it and got away,” said Wesley.

  “Cut it?” Torchy demanded. “With his teeth? He had nothing on him, and there was nothing in there he could have used.”

  “When you eliminate the impossible, what you have left, no matter how unlikely, must be the truth.” Wesley gave a superior smile. “Conan Doyle?”

  Torchy scowled. “Was he flogging German lager too?”

  “Ignoramus. He wrote the Sherlock Holmes stories.”

  “Call me Ignatius again and you’ll need Dr Watson.” Torchy chewed his lip and threw his rucksack from his back. From its innards, he took a number of homemade bombs. “Let’s just get the gear placed and get out of here.”

  *****

  The sudden appearance of the explosives, prompted Sceptre to comment. “Kevin and I are tied up. The police will know that we had nothing to do with it.”

  Torchy grinned evilly, and held up one of his bombs, a thin, plastic tube with a couple of electrical connections at its head. “See this? Simple firework. Sugar and weedkiller. All it needs is a spark, which is provided by the battery and the timer.” He showed her the battery-operated clock on the head. “When the clock triggers, the electrical circuit is complete and shorts out, creating a spark, which triggers the explosive core.” He pointed to the tube. “Also in there is potassium stored in paraffin. When the bomb explodes, it’ll trigger the sprinkler system,” he gestured up at the iron beams overhead, “And that brings water down on the potassium. Do you know what happens when potassium mixes with water? You get a reaction producing potassium hydroxide and hydrogen gas.”

  “Well thanks for the chemistry lesson, Torchy,” said Kevin pulling at the ropes restraining him, “but we’ll be off now.”

  Torchy ignored him. “The fire from our bombs will trigger the hydrogen and burn this place to the ground. We have eight of these bombs, and they’ll be all over the hall. We’ll leave one near you. When it goes up, so do you, and when they find you, the ropes tying you two together will be burned through. It’ll take months to work out what really happened, Dimmock will get his insurance payout and we’ll be the other side of the world.”

  “Torchy,” Kevin pleaded, “Don’t do this. It’s Christmas.”

  “That’s right,” chuckled Wesley, “but only one of us is gonna be around to see Santa arrive.” He turned to his compatriot. “What time do we set the clocks for?”

  “Midnight,” replied Torchy. “Just as the fireworks start outside.”

  From the market square came the sound of carol singers outside the Red Lion. Torchy grinned at Sceptre. “How’s it feel to think that in less than half an hour from now you’ll know firsthand whether there really are such things as ghosts?”

  She gave him a withering stare. “I already know, and you will find out soon.”

  Once more, Torchy ignored the bravado. “You won’t have long to wait,” he said. “Once the bombs go off, the sprinklers will come on a few seconds later, the hydrogen will be released and … woof! Up you go.”

  “You can’t do this,” Kevin protested as Torchy and Wesley prepared to split up and plant their weapons.

  “What you mean,” said Wesley, “is we shouldn’t do this, not that we can’t.”

  “Great,” moaned Kevin. “I’m whining about him killing us and he corrects my grammar.”

  The actor nodded. “I think it’s so important that we learn to speak correctly, don’t you?”

  “Oh naturally,” sneered Kevin. “I wouldn’t wanna turn up at the pearly gates talking common.”

  “Will you two shut up,” snapped Torchy. “Right, Al, let’s get the rest of the bottles in place and scram.” He gave Sceptre a final grin. “See y’around, psychic.”

  They moved off and Sceptre promptly called her butler. “Fishwick.”

  “I’m here, Madam.”

  “Can you help with the ropes?” she asked.

  “I had this same problem with Mr Brennan earlier, Madam,” the butler admitted, “and I had to rattle the rear door so that he could get himself out. However, if you and Mr Keeley will remain still, I shall free you in a matter of seconds.”

  “Thank you, Fishwick.” Sceptre concluded her conversation with her butler, and warned Kevin, “Whatever you do, don’t move.”

  *****

  If the knots holding Pete had been comparatively simple, these were much more complex, and Fishwick had cause to revise his initial optimism.

  “It will require a good deal more work than I imagined, My Lady.”

  “Well don’t take too long, Fishwick,” she insisted.

  “Of course not, Madam.”

  The lack of space between the mistress, Kevin and the iron upright, presented no problem to Fishwick. Time and space
were different on the Spirit Plane. Insinuating himself between them, he began to work on the complex knots, loosening the bonds one by one. From the outside world came the sound of the church bells chiming the three quarter hour.

  “Fishwick, you must hurry,” Sceptre urged.

  “Patience, Madam,” said her butler as he loosened yet another knot, “we are almost there.”

  *****

  The bottles were strategically placed. One close to Sceptre and Kevin, another near the gas main, one near a stall specialising in perfumes with all its alcohol based products, another in the cafeteria, where the plastic furnishing would melt and add to the toxic fumes.

  “The art of a good blaze,” said Torchy as he set the final one outside Dimmock’s furnishers, “is making sure you keep the fire brigade at bay, and there’s nothing like fumes for that.”

  “You’re obviously an expert,” said Wesley. “Enjoy chemistry at school, did you?”

  “Oh yes. Especially when we learned the principles of combustion.” Satisfied with his work, Torchy checked his watch. “Quarter to twelve,” he said. “Time we were out celebrating Christmas.” He took a last glance across the market hall. In fifteen minutes, the lot would go up in flames and he would be considerably richer.

  With an avaricious grin on his face, he turned into Dimmock Furnishers and stopped dead.

  “Hello, Torchy.”

  Wesley took one look at Pete Brennan’s angry face, turned and fled. Torchy threw a punch, Pete ducked and head butted Torchy in the gut. They flew back out of the shop, rolling along the gallery. Torchy straddled Pete and began to rain blows down. Pete rode them, waited for a gap and when it appeared, he threw a straight right and smacked Torchy on the jaw. Torchy fell back and Pete was upon him.

  *****

  The ropes suddenly fell free and with a little more work, Fishwick undid the bindings at her wrist. Sceptre wriggled from them and turned to untie Kevin.