Death by Soup

by David MacPhail

  For my wife Suzanne, you’re SOOOO

  soup-er!

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1: The Soggy Beginning

  Chapter 2: The Dismal Day Out

  Chapter 3: The Awful Arrival

  Chapter 4: The Ghostly Jacuzzi

  Chapter 5: The Penne Problem

  Chapter 6: The Deadly Soup

  Chapter 7: The Soupy Suspects

  Chapter 8: The Midnight Footsteps

  Chapter 9: The Inside Job-eth?

  Chapter 10: The Reeky Ruins

  Chapter 11: The Big Cheese

  Chapter 12: The Terrible Twins

  Chapter 13: The Deadly Gargoyle

  Chapter 14: The Terrible Tandem

  Chapter 15: The Deadly Abbey

  Chapter 16: The Spooky Applause

  Chapter 17: The Lord’s Alibi

  Chapter 18: The Cyanide Fondue

  Chapter 19: The Splattered Platter

  Chapter 20: The Wolfsbane Warning

  Chapter 21: The Karate Granny

  Chapter 22: The Viennese Solution

  Chapter 23: The Grey Lady

  Chapter 24: The Top-Secret Grandad

  Chapter 25: The Final Question

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  The Soggy Beginning

  It was raining in Glasgow, which shouldn’t come as a surprise. It’s a bit like saying it’s sunny in Majorca – it’s always sunny in Majorca! Or saying the air on Mars is a bit thin – yeah, obvs! This is Glasgow, it rains. A lot.

  But this wasn’t your normal rain, the kind that gently pitter patters on your roof and drips off umbrellas. This was a full-blown monsoon, battering against the window of our flat in a wild, soggy torrent.

  Usually I’m the one caught out in weather like that, because that’s just my luck. I’m normally that drenched boy you pass in your warm car, soaked to the skin and looking like something a drowned rat would have a good laugh at. But on this occasion, I was lucky enough to be indoors. In the kitchen in fact, sitting at the table and looking out through the rain-blurred window.

  “Something’s not right,” I said.

  “What do you mean, boy?” asked Grandad, in an Indian accent fused with Glaswegian. Or, should I say, the ghost of my grandad, who sat beside me. Well, he didn’t really sit, having no body to sit with, more floated in a sort of sitting position, which he often did to make himself feel less like what he was – an actual, real-life spectre. Not that it did any good. His face still had a green tinge, the kind you get with a bad case of seasickness, and he was completely see-through. To top it off he wore a Mackintosh raincoat with the collar turned up, a fedora hat and a pair of sunglasses. He looked ridiculous. Thankfully, nobody else could see him but me.

  I leant forward and whispered, so that Mum couldn’t hear. “Can’t you take your coat and hat off? We’re indoors.”

  “I am a ghost, Jayesh,” he replied. “I can do what I want.”

  “Sorry? What’s not right, dearie?” asked Mum, flouncing around the kitchen. She was cooking supper, though it looked more like she was doing some kind of weird modern dance. She had long flowing hair, and wore a long flowing scarf and long flowing dress, all of which were completely impractical for cooking, or indeed any form of human activity.

  I stared down at the letter in my hands, which had dropped through our door out of the blue just a few weeks before. It was from Yummy Cola, the drinks company:

  Mrs K Patel & Master J Patel

  CONGRATULATIONS!!!

  You have won a fabulous weekend break at a luxury country house hotel!

  We look forward to welcoming you at Brightburgh Manor

  “The thing is, Mum, you said you never entered any competition for Yummy Cola.”

  She scoffed. “Why would I do that? Fizzy drinks are bad for your aura. And they make you burp.”

  That figured. My mum never drank anything that wasn’t 100 per cent organic. Her idea of a refreshing beverage was a glass of carrot juice. If she wanted to push the boat out she might squeeze some honey in it, but that was about it. “Don’t you get it?” I said. “If you didn’t enter the competition, and I didn’t enter the competition – how did we win the competition?”

  “What?” she said, nonplussed.

  “I mean, how did we win a competition we didn’t put in for?”

  Mum blinked, then shook her head and ladled something hot and steaming into a bowl, which I hoped against all hope was edible. “Jay, there’s an age-old saying: ‘Never look a gift horse in the mouth’.”

  “She is right, son,” said Grandad. “And besides, look at the brochure.” He jabbed his finger at the photos of the hotel and the rooms, which looked quite plush. “Jacuzzis in every room!”

  “So?” I whispered. “You can’t even use a jacuzzi, you’re dead.”

  “Do not rub it in,” he said, offended.

  “What did you say?” asked Mum.

  It was so difficult always having two different conversations at once. I was constantly getting mixed up. Frankly, people were beginning to think I was weird. Apart from Mum, who was already a bit weird herself.

  “There’s another saying,” I replied. “‘If something looks too good to be true, then it probably is’.”

  “Huh!” huffed Grandad. “Kids these days! They do not know they are living. When I was your age, living in India, I would have walked twenty miles for a jacuzzi.”

  “Jacuzzis weren’t even invented then!” I said, but then Mum looked at me quizzically, wondering what I was talking about. I shook my head. “Nothing! Look, it’s how we won is the question.”

  “You think it is some kind of scam?” said Grandad.

  “A scam?” I rubbed my chin. “Not sure. It’s just odd, that’s all.”

  Grandad was staring intently at the overhead light. His spooky eyeballs were twirling around in their sockets, watching a fly that was circling the lampshade. His face flashed with determination.

  “That fly is annoying me. I am going to ghost-whack it!”

  Grandad had ghostly powers. He could touch things, move things about, and even kick people. As for his spectral sneezes, they could blow up tiny whirlwinds. His special powers had helped me out of more than a few tight spots during our detective work. But lately he’d been suffering a crisis of confidence, a bit like a striker who could no longer score goals. He didn’t believe he could do it.

  Grandad floated higher, until his eyes were level with the bottom of the lampshade. He studied the fly’s movements closely for a few seconds before slowly stretching out his arms.

  “YAAAHH!” He slapped his hands shut on the fly.

  Unfortunately, his hands just went right through each other. The fly didn’t feel a thing, it just kept going round in circles. Grandad’s face fell, and he sunk back down to the table like a deflated balloon. “I am a rubbish ghost!”

  “A scam?” Mum snatched up a mallet and whacked the large gong that sat on the table. A gong that was about a foot away from my head. My eardrums quivered.

  Then she yelled at the top of her voice:

  “DINN-ERRRR!” which at least stopped my eardrums quivering, but made them wobble instead.

  All this was for Granny’s benefit, as she was hard of hearing.

  Granny was a tiny terrier of a woman. And I mean tiny. She was once offered a part as one of Snow White’s dwarves in the local panto. And she was shorter than some of the children playing the part. Lately she’d taken up karate. She burst through the door, dressed in a white karate outfit, with a bandana wrapped round her head.

  She half-swaggered, half-waddled to the table. I blamed both the swagger and the waddle on the bodybuilding supplements she’d been taking.
She said she wanted to look like she was in an action movie. I wasn’t sure that a movie about karate grannies would be very successful.

  “Ach, there’s ma girl,” said Grandad, grinning at her fondly. “Just as beautiful as the day I married her.”

  Granny suddenly snarled. A flash of white sleeve, and she lashed her arm out and karate-chopped the fly mid-air.

  “HI-YAAA!”

  The fly dropped with one pathetic final ‘BUZZ’, then thrashed around helplessly on its back on the kitchen floor.

  Grandad’s grin only got bigger. “What a woman!”

  “Well,” said Mum. “If it’s a scam to get money out of us, dearie, then they chose the wrong people to mess with.”

  She wasn’t wrong there. We didn’t have any money to scam. Times were tight, especially since Dad disappeared off the face of the earth ten months previously.

  Mum plonked the soup bowls in front of us. “Ta-daaaa!” she said, as if she’d just done a magic trick. “Kale, seaweed and turnip soup!”

  I stared down at the contents of my bowl. My stomach turned. It looked like something you’d find at the bottom of a ditch. Smelt like it too.

  Yes, times truly were tight.

  I glanced at Granny. Her face was as white as her karate outfit. Her eye twitched at Mum. “Notice she disnae eat it!” she croaked.

  Mum gave an airy flick of her hand. “I had a big lunch.”

  Grandad chortled. “For once, I am glad I am deid.”

  “Come on! Eat up!” Mum smiled. “We’re off to the hotel early tomorrow morning. We’re going to make a day of it!”

  Granny caught my eye and nodded towards the pot plant near the kitchen table.

  “See, Jayesh!” said Grandad. “The things your granny does for you.”

  He was right, because she was offering me her turn at using the plant pot to dispose of my dinner, which was amazingly generous given the food that was on offer.

  I nodded thankfully, then waited until Mum’s back was turned and tipped the contents of the bowl into the pot. The plant gulped it up.

  SCHLLLUURRPPP!

  A big rubbery thing, goodness knows how it survived with so much of Mum’s cooking poured into it, but it did. In fact, it looked like it was thriving.

  Granny winked at me. She adjusted her bandana, picked up her spoon and took a deep breath. I placed my hand on her shoulder and gave it a sympathetic squeeze. She reminded me of one of those kamikaze pilots from the Second World War, preparing to dive to their fiery (or in her case, soupy) death.

  Chapter 2

  The Dismal Day Out

  Later that evening, I lay in bed turning the letter from Yummy Cola over in my fingers. The envelope had been stamped in Glasgow – nothing unusual in that. A standard window envelope with a self-sticking flap. There was a Yummy Cola logo stamped on the back which looked real enough, though you could easily knock that up on any computer.

  “Maybe I’m just reading too much into it,” I said.

  “I think you are,” replied Grandad, glowing ghostly green at the bottom of my bed, like the most annoying nightlight ever. “Did you not already phone the hotel? And they confirmed it was all OK.”

  “Yes.”

  He shrugged. “Well, there you are.” Then he grinned. “One word: jacuzzis. They have jacuzzis.” He laughed and tried to slap his thigh, except his hand just went right through. “Ugh.” I suspected Grandad was looking forward to this trip more than I was.

  I glanced up at the faded, yellowing poster above my bed, featuring my father wearing a turban and staring down ominously at a crystal ball. Dad was a stage magician called The Great Maharishi – before he disappeared, that is. Grandad and I had spent the past ten months searching for any clue of his whereabouts, not that it had helped. In the process, I’d turned into a detective, and Grandad was my somewhat annoying sidekick.

  “Night, Grandad,” I said, and switched off the light. I still wasn’t entirely sure what he did to amuse himself when I was asleep. He couldn’t read a book or a magazine, because he couldn’t pick anything up. Sometimes, when he was at his most annoying, or I couldn’t sleep because of his greeny glow, I would take him into the living room and put the TV on for him. But that was annoying too because the next morning all he would do was complain about what rubbish there was on the television these days. That night, I was so tired I left Grandad to make his own fun.

  I dreamt about Dad, as I often did. He was on stage at the King’s Theatre. He was in the middle of his favourite routine, which was called ‘The Great Vanishing Act’. With a flourish of his cape, he shut himself inside a coffin-like box standing on stage. His assistant twirled the box round on its wheels, and then opened it again. The box was empty. The crowd gasped and applauded. Then a spotlight shone down on the wings, on the exact spot where Dad was meant to reappear. Except this time, he didn’t. His assistant looked this way and that, her face suddenly worried. The audience looked confused. The applause died, as everyone fell into shocked silence.

  Then, I was alone, standing right in the centre of Glasgow at St Enoch Square. Crowds of people were swarming by on either side, but I stood completely still, staring down the wide-open mouth of the subway station entrance. There was a subway ticket in my hand. I held it up and gazed at it. The ticket was issued at 12.01 pm on the day Dad disappeared. Where was he going? Was he involved in something that none of us knew anything about? I turned the ticket over. There on the back was a name, scrawled in blue ink in Dad’s own hand:

  *

  When I woke up the next morning, Grandad was gazing purposefully at that same subway ticket, which was pinned on my corkboard, together with the maps, newspaper cuttings, and any other bits of evidence I’d gathered. A web of orange string linked everything up.

  The words ‘LYLE OAKEN’ were fainter now, after ten months, but they were still there.

  “You’re sure he’s not dead?” I asked, rolling out of bed.

  “Oh, good morning, Jayesh” he said. “No, I would know if he was up there.” He pointed up at the ceiling. “And he is definitely not.”

  I yawned. “That subway ticket is still the only piece of real evidence we have.” Which was very strange indeed. After all this time, there was virtually nothing to show why Dad had disappeared. How could someone have gone missing so publicly, so conspicuously, without even a trace? Unless he wanted to disappear, or needed to…

  “I know, son,” Grandad replied, “but do not worry. That is why I am here. I came back to help you find your father again. And we will.”

  *

  After breakfast, I packed for the trip, stuffing some of my special detective equipment into my green Parka’s deep pockets: my notebook, magnifying glass and my special plastic ruler, which was great for opening locks.

  I found Grandad in the living room watching an old detective show on TV. “Have you seen this? It is called ‘Miss Marple’. Everyone thinks she’s just this sweet little old lady, but actually she is a master detective. Now, who does that remind you of?”

  “I know,” I said, because really she was a bit like me. Everyone thought I was just a (slightly weird) eleven year old, but I was actually a very talented super-sleuth in disguise.

  “Me!” he said, jabbing his thumbs towards himself.

  “What!?” I snorted. “Grandad, you couldn’t solve a crime if it got up and gave you a haircut.”

  “What are you talking about? It is me who solves all the crimes in this family.”

  “Yeah, whatever. Now come on, it’s time to go.”

  I hauled our suitcase down the stairs and stuffed it into Petal’s rear end. ‘Petal’ was what Mum called our campervan, an aging relic, which was painted lime green. The inside was even worse, decked out in Indian fabrics and hanging beads. The beads especially were a nuisance – they kept swinging about and whacking us in the face whenever Mum hurtled round a corner. And she did a lot of hurtling.

  “I would not be seen alive in this heap of junk,” said Granda
d, reluctantly floating into the back.

  Granny jumped up into the passenger seat next to Mum, wearing a kimono and fanning herself with a copy of her Shotokan Karate magazine. She was humming the theme tune to her favourite new movie, Kung Fu Werewolves. Me and Mum hadn’t had the courage to tell Granny that her name wasn’t actually on the invitation. We figured we’d leave that to the hotel, if they were brave enough, or mad enough, but I doubted it.

  “Right,” Mum sighed airily as she stuck the keys in the ignition, “we are now officially on holiday, so no argy-bargy.” This sage advice was instantly ruined when she turned the ignition a couple of times and Petal’s engine failed to start. Her face twisted into a fierce snarl and she punched the dashboard. “Come ONNNN, ya total pee stain!”

  Eventually the engine choked into life, and we were off on our adventure. The hotel was at Loch Lomond, which wasn’t far from Glasgow, but Mum insisted we keep stopping off on the way. The first stop was at a fair trade shop and café called Hippie-Chino. It was just her kind of place. She spent half an hour oohing and ahhing over everything before cleaning out her purse there, all so she could be the proud owner of some incense sticks, a packet of herbal tea and a soapstone sculpture of an elephant. After that, we had no money left to buy lunch.

  “Don’t worry, dearie, we’ll eat when we get to the hotel. The food is all included, you know,” she said.

  The second stop-off was even worse. She brought the van to a screeching halt by the roadside, then kicked us out and shepherded us up a hillside. It turned out that the hillside was actually Ben Lomond, an actual mountain, and she wanted us to climb it. “It’ll be good for the constitution,” she declared. “Fresh air cleanses the aura.”

  We made a strange sight, traipsing up through the heather. Mum was wearing a pair of Dr. Martens that didn’t match, together with a long dress, a flowing red scarf and a sun hat. The higher we climbed, the windier it got, so the scarf, the hat, the dress and her hair blew about all over the place. And she carried no supplies whatsoever: no water, food, energy bars, map, compass, nothing. The only thing she’d thought to bring along was a single rock, which she announced she was going to place on a cairn at the top. I at least had some provisions with me: a half-eaten, two-day-old bar of chocolate that I found lodged in my back pocket. And then there was Granny, dressed up like some kind of Japanese war-robot.