The Spook and the Spirit in the Stone

by Jilly Paddock

  "We're not interested in his two deluded followers, just in Huxon himself. Earth will be happy if we nail the perverted bastard," Giselle adds. "And Prosperity City will be a better place without such scum loose in its streets."

  "A strange mix of souls to team up in such a serious crime," Afton says. "We had the key to their relationship at the start, although we didn't realise it – the link was flowers. Hux worked at the University, first as a groundsman, and then in the botanical gardens. He supplied exotic blooms to Polly's florist shop and to the Ikebana society, of which Martia Proust was also a member. It was all perfectly legal and above board, part of the garden's income-generation scheme, but Hux didn't stop there. He stole other plant material from his greenhouses, all kinds of seeds, flower-heads and leaves, many of which contained controlled substances. He was sacked three months ago, when the University discovered what he was doing. There's no evidence to suggest that he ever sold his bounty to other users, so he must have taken the whole cornucopia of mind-altering alkaloids himself, which may explain why he's such a disturbed individual."

  "Will we get a confession out of him?" I wonder. "We've got him for Sophie's kidnapping, but what about Katie McGuire? He also mentioned three other little girls."

  "He isn't talking." Afton scowls. I gather that she's spent most of the night beating her head against that brick wall. "He just sits there like some infuriating Buddha, wearing his superior little smile."

  "I had a search run through our missing persons file for females below the age of twelve, which seemed to be a suitable cut-off," Vincenzo sighs. "It came up with sixteen unresolved cases over the past three years."

  "Mine shafts are great places to hide bodies," Ivory says. "On the one hand, the even temperature would preserve a corpse, although the damp would offset that to some extent, but on the other hand, if the pits run deep enough, we’d never find the remains."

  "He is your man though – a serial rapist and murderer." Giselle shudders prettily. "I'm certain of it. The inside of his head is littered with nightmare."

  That's little help to us. No court in the galaxy would ever convict using evidence gathered by a telepath. With a sinking feeling, I visualise Hux wriggling off our hook. "If he won't confess to any previous crimes and we only manage to pin this kidnap on him, how long a term will he serve?"

  "Since Miss Crispianou was recovered alive and almost well –" 'Cenzo shakes his head. "Seven to ten years, but nearer five if he keeps his nose clean."

  "That isn't long enough..." the spook mutters.

  I'm not sure anyone else hears her, but I do. All of the hair on the back of my neck ripples like wheat in a high wind. I sense danger, very close and very potent, but apart from a slight dilation of her pupils, Giselle is still.

  "Madame Crispianou is considering petitioning the authorities with a request for Huxon to be extradited to Earth, to stand trial there," Vincenzo says. "While it's unlikely that our government would agree to that, would his sentence be harsher in a Terran court? Giselle?"

  "What ...?” She's vague, distracted, and that bothers me. “Uh, no... I don't suppose so. The best we could hope for would be an open-ended committal to a secure unit for the criminally insane."

  "Don't those sort of places have a history of declaring their inmates cured and releasing them back into society just so they can re-offend?" Ivory asks. I guess he's not renowned for his tact.

  "The cure rate at such institutions is extremely good. Less than five percent of clients commit a further crime after their release," Giselle quotes, showing no reaction to the slight. Her eyes are vacant, as if her mind is somewhere else. "Only a tiny fraction are as severe as the original offence."

  "Whatever the outcome of this case, it's up to us to collect all the evidence we can." Vincenzo steps in to turn aside a potential argument. "Ivory, I want your team ready to go within the hour. Afton, do you want in on the search of the Soultrap Mine? I do realise that Jerome might not want to go back there, given his experiences."

  "Soultrap?"

  "That's how it's marked on the old maps," Afton says, with an apologetic shrug. "But, Captain, we can't risk taking Jerome with us. Hux conjured the ghost-wolf to keep him in those tunnels, and I can't think of a better way to ensure that we meet the thing than to bring its prey back to its lair."

  ‘Cenzo grins. "I thought you were a sceptic when it came to the supernatural?"

  "I've not yet ruled out a rational explanation.”

  "For an unseen, insubstantial spirit-creature...?”

  There's a sudden buffet of panic-based noise outside and Lacey crashes through the door. "Sir, you'd better get down to the cells! We've called in the med-team. Huxon is having some kind of seizure!"

  "Move!" ‘Cenzo snaps.

  We sprint along the corridors as a mob, taking the stairs to the basement at break-neck speed, Ivory in the lead and Afton at his shoulder. I find myself to the rear of the pack, with Vincenzo. The Captain isn't as unfit as he looks, just a little breathless in his effort to keep up with the rest of us. Giselle dawdles along behind, although if she wanted to, she could be there first. When we reach the cell, the door is wide open and a small cluster of staff have gathered to watch the grim spectacle. LaRue's inside, giving CPR, and Ivory joins him. I suppose they know what they're doing but, if it was my life on the line, I'd opt for a medic with some recent practice on live patients.

  "What happened?" Vincenzo asks the guard on duty.

  "He just started screaming!" The man shakes his head, floating on the edge of shock. "Screaming blue murder – no words, just pure fear. By the time we got the door open he was on the floor, having convulsions."

  The med-team pile in, displacing our duo of have-a-go pathologists. To give them their due, they work on Hux for a good ten minutes before declaring him dead. As they're clearing their equipment, I sneak a look through the doorway. Hux’s eyes are still open, one brown, the other pied with blue, both now fixed on the invisible. His face is twisted with pain and there's such a stench of terror in the room that I doubt if I could breath if I ventured over the threshold. I'm glad when we move along the corridor into the relative quiet of a dead-end, leaving Lacey and LaRue to supervise the clean-up.

  Vincenzo wears a scowl like a thunderhead. "How did he die?"

  “The paramedics' scans suggest a massive intra-cranial bleed," Ivory says. "With no sign of any external trauma to the head or the scalp, I'd have to guess a CVA, a stroke. We'll have to do an autopsy, of course, to confirm it...”

  "Are you telling me it was due to natural causes?"

  "Looks that way." Ivory shrugs. "It might be best to have someone outside the department do the post-mortem, someone impartial."

  Afton turns slowly to face the spook. "You killed him."

  "Me!" Giselle is all innocence. Beside her a newborn babe would look guilty. "How could I have? I haven't been out of your sight since ten o'clock this morning."

  "Did you do this?" 'Cenzo demands.

  "With what?" She spreads her empty hands. "I don't carry any weapons."

  "You have your mind," I say, very softly. "And that's enough, isn't it?"

  She smiles at me, her dainty face framed in a soft halo of primrose-pale hair, her lilac eyes huge and luminous – such delicate beauty concealing utter poison. "I'm only a simple mind-reader. I don't possess the power to kill. No-one does. All those stories about spooks and psi-assassins are just that, childrens' stories, rumours and fairytales."

  "So how did he die?"

  "Perhaps his ghostly pet walked through the wall of his cell and scared him to death? Or perhaps he had a weakness in one of the blood vessels in his brain and the stress of his arrest induced a stroke? Perhaps it was God's will, as a punishment for hurting all those little girls?" There's a sudden hint of cruel amusement in her lovely eyes, a smear of mockery. “Which scenario do you like best? You may as well pick one and call it the truth."

  "Leave it, Jerome." Vincenzo shakes his head. "You don't have
to write the report – I do, and since Terrapol have got what they wanted out of this case, I don't suppose they'll care what I put in the paperwork. Now that you've accomplished your mission, Giselle, I guess you'll be leaving us."

  "Been a pleasure working with you, Captain!" She lies, as she's been lying all along. "Likewise, Detective-Inspector. Jerome, might I have a word with you before I go? In private."

  I look to ‘Cenzo to save me, but he nods his permission and leads the others away. Afton's reluctant to go. What other proof do I need that she's my friend as well as my partner?

  "You ask dangerous questions, dragonman." All of the levity has gone from the spook’s voice. "Because of what you did for Sophie, we're prepared to ignore them, this time."

  "You did kill Hux." I've suffered too many threats lately. I must be getting immune to them. "I know it."

  "Knowledge is nothing without proof, and you can't prove diddly-squat!" She grins like a tiger or a wolf, a worse predator than either. "That's what makes us spooks so scary, and so useful to Earth."

  "Gee, look how I'm shaking in my boots here!"

  "You aren't as brave as you pretend to be." That's not a guess, as my emotions are an open book to her. "Pity, that – if you'd had a little more courage, you'd have let me into that empty bed of yours. We'd have been good together, big guy. We could have had all kinds of fun!"

  I let her sample my disgust. "Sex with you isn't my idea of fun. Now, say goodbye and get out of my life. We're done here."

  Anger sets violet sparks in her eyes, ice-cold, spiteful fury. Without a word, without raising a single finger, she does something no man or woman has ever done to me before; she uses her psi-power to punch me in the groin, side-stepping my defences and thumping my tender parts with an invisible hand. She makes damn sure it hurts too, and I slump against the wall, gasping for breath. Giselle smiles in satisfaction at my pain, turns on her heel and stalks away. I fling my anger after her, but all it does is make her giggle as she slips out of my sight.

  When I can walk without wincing, I go back upstairs. Afton is waiting for me outside 'Cenzo's office. "Are you okay? The bitch didn't hurt you, did she?"

  "Just a little, in the name of a dramatic exit. I'll survive – after all, that's my best skill."

  "Buy you a drink?"

  "I thought you had a mine to search?"

  Afton sighs. "That's all a bit pointless now, isn't it?"

  "I'll take a coffee then. The canteen?"

  "Hardly! Let's go out...”

  "Jerome!"

  Sophie Crispianou is hurrying down the corridor towards us, closely followed by her bodyguard. The change in her is incredible; scrubbed clean of grime, with her dark hair combed and glossy, and dressed in elegant burgundy velvet, she fairly glows with health. She skips up to me and demands a hug, while Mason glowers in the background. I get the distinct impression that he doesn't much like the look of me. I beat him on height but he outweighs me by around forty percent – if it came to a fight, he'd flatten me in a matter of seconds. Typical Cluster tom-cats, squaring up to each other on sight. No wonder the rest of the civilised galaxy consider us barbarians.

  "Mason didn't want to swing by your station, but I nagged him until he agreed," Sophie says, still smiling. "We're going back home today and I needed to see you before I left. I want to thank you for everything and give you a present."

  "You don't need to do that... "

  "Yes, I do. Mason?" She reaches back and the bodyguard sheepishly produces a package gift-wrapped in purple and silver, which she drops into my hands. "Go on, open it!"

  I carefully untie the ribbon and unfold the box. Inside is a chocolate-brown teddy-bear with copper-gauze wings and a halo, suitably askew over one ear. "Hey, he's really cute! Does he have a name?"

  "You can call him Gabriel." She's grinning from ear to ear, delighted that I like her gift. "As one guardian angel to another, you ought to be on first-name terms."

  "Thank you. I'll treasure him." Not empty words – I mean it. I notice that Mason is fidgeting and guess that he wants to get his charge back on schedule. "You ought to go, Sophie I'm sure you've got masses of stuff to do before the ship lifts. Have a safe journey, okay?"

  "I will." She tugs on my shirt until I bend low enough for her to plant a kiss on my cheek. "'Bye, Jerome. Oh, and Mom sends her thanks too, and says that if ever you need a favour, you should give her a call."

  "’Bye yourself, Sophie."

  I watch the pair of them leave the station, the dark-clad bulk of the bodyguard trailing behind the bright, bouncy little girl. Just before she vanishes through the doors, Sophie turns to wave.

  Afton coughs softly. "Shall we make that something stronger than coffee?"

  "I could use some serious alcohol, that's for sure!"

  She takes my elbow, steers me towards the street. "Remind me to stay in your good books, partner. Have you any idea what kind of mayhem a favour from the President's step-sister could buy? If anyone annoys you, you could snap your fingers and get the Mother-world to flatten their home planet!"

  I think about that all the way across the plaza to the Vienna Bar, the department's favourite watering-hole. Only part-way through the door do I remember that I have purple gift-wrap in one hand and Gabriel in the other. Already some of the pre-lunch clientele are beginning to stare. 'Uh, Afton, do you think I should take Sophie’s present back to the Pit?"

  "What, the bear? No, bring him in and I'll buy him a drink too." Afton glances at me, with the merest hint of a smile hovering at the corner of her mouth. "Unless he's drinking doubles, that is!"