Soho Ghosts (The Soho Series Book 2)

by Greg Keen

  ‘Nothing, if you’ve been telling the truth.’

  ‘I swear to God, I have,’ he said. ‘And all that business in the bath. You do understand? Working at Mountjoy’s might not be much, but it’s all I’ve got . . .’

  I’d lied to Will about who I was and put his livelihood at risk. Perhaps it had been unwarranted. Having reached this conclusion, I kicked him directly in the balls. The breath was driven out of his mouth in a whoosh, and he sank to his knees.

  ‘Thanks for the Scotch,’ I said, and saw myself out.

  TWENTY

  I left Brundle Gardens like a man walking on stilts. Judging by the tremor in my hands and the smell on my breath, the guy distributing the Standard probably thought I’d been on the piss since breakfast. The story on page five made for interesting reading.

  Work on the River Heights development had been suspended. Foundation excavations had uncovered an Anglo-Saxon burial ground. The project was already behind schedule due to a protracted, and ultimately futile, bid to have the old Corn Exchange protected. Hopefully the discovery wouldn’t affect the meeting Blimp and I had scheduled for the following day.

  There was no sign of Gary when I got back to the flat. Either he was stationed outside Billy Dylan’s apartment complex or he was in the gym knocking out star jumps. I had a long shower and a quick rummage through my wardrobe (grey chinos, blue Oxford shirt, white T-shirt, black corduroy jacket) before setting off for Dean Street.

  Olivia Porteus’s eighteenth-century town house was one of only a handful in Soho that had been spared the developers’ attentions. Three storeys high, it retained its original frontage, including arched windows with white frames that contrasted sharply with dark brickwork. The building was sectioned from the street by iron railings and its front door was an imposing slab of wood at least ten feet high.

  Attached to a wall was an intercom, underneath which was a keypad and four buttons with names next to them. Three of these were companies. The one at the top was labelled O. Porteus in handwritten script. I pressed it and waited. And then I pressed it again. And again. I’d begun to suspect that Olivia had had a better offer when her voice came over the speaker.

  ‘Is that you, Kenny?’

  ‘Er, yeah. Am I too early?’

  ‘Bang on time. Come up the stairs until you reach the top.’

  An electronic lock clicked open. I entered a roomy entrance hall. Its walls were covered in classical murals. Satyrs pursued nymphs through olive groves. A unicorn reared up in front of a toga-clad man reclining on a throne. Most spectacular was the painting to my left, depicting a pair of soldiers clutching spears and standing guard over an urn around the rim of which ran a line of Greek script.

  Two doors led off the first landing: one to a company called ZETO-CHUFTI PR, according to the Perspex nameplate; the other had FPTN LTD. inscribed on a shiny brass plaque. The second floor belonged exclusively to JEREMY HARCROFT ASSOCIATES. Olivia Porteus was waiting at the top of the third flight of stairs wearing a pinny with the OXO Cube logo across it. I handed over the bouquet and wine I’d bought.

  ‘Hope it’s okay,’ I said wheezily. ‘Didn’t know what you were cooking.’

  ‘Spot on,’ she said. ‘And these smell heavenly. Do come in.’

  Olivia installed me in the sitting room while she attended to something in the kitchen. Bearing in mind that her grandfather had once called it home, I’d been anticipating something fairly spectacular. A gallery of crystal skulls, perhaps, or Anaglypta wallpaper embossed with a ‘666’ motif. That it appeared to have been furnished by Heal’s was both a relief and a disappointment.

  The sofa and chairs had been upholstered in dark-blue hessian and a huge lump of coral occupied the fireplace. The chandelier might have been in situ during Al’s time; an industrial zinc bookcase most certainly hadn’t been. The most exotic volume was a copy of Omar Khayyam bound in green leather. Alexander Porteus’s signature scrawled across the title page gave me pause for thought.

  A far smaller bookcase held a dozen volumes. Presumably these were more precious, as glass doors protected the cabinet. A couple of the books were leather-bound, although most were covered in faded cloth. Five had Porteus’s name on the spine; a few were by authors unknown to me, and the rest unattributed.

  Where the doors met was a brass lock. Small splinters of wood indicated that it had been recently forced. I was wondering if Olivia had lost the key when she came back into the room with the flowers in a vase. ‘Don’t they look beautiful?’ she said. ‘They must have cost a fortune, Kenny – you really shouldn’t have.’

  ‘My pleasure,’ I said. ‘This is a lovely room.’

  ‘Thank you.’ She placed the vase on a side table. ‘Dinner will be fifteen minutes.’ A mouth-watering aroma had accompanied Olivia in from the kitchen. My last proper meal had been Gary’s tofu stir-fry. Hopefully whatever Olivia was cooking would expunge it from my memory. ‘Do have a seat,’ she said.

  I occupied one of the armchairs while Olivia settled on the sofa. Jeans and trainers had replaced the dress. Her hair remained up, as it had been in the bookshop when Sebastian had made his eventful visit.

  ‘Before we eat, I want to apologise for my brother’s behaviour,’ Olivia said, as though reading my mind. ‘That way we’ll enjoy our evening more.’

  ‘There’s absolutely no need,’ I replied.

  ‘That’s kind, Kenny, but you deserve an explanation, particularly after you stood up for me. Sebastian has some issues . . . Actually, he has a drug problem, is the plain truth of it. Often he needs money at short notice to score or to pay off debts. I’m not sure what this afternoon was about.’

  ‘It can’t be easy for you,’ I said.

  Olivia shrugged. ‘He’s my brother. I want to help him.’

  ‘Has he tried rehab?’

  ‘Half a dozen times. It looked as though the last session had done the trick until a few months ago. Seb’s fine until he falls in with the wrong people.’

  Olivia stared at the fireplace and tried to harness her emotions. For a moment I thought they would run away with her. Eventually she succeeded.

  ‘I’m sorry, Kenny, it’s just that Sebastian overdosed last year. If his neighbour hadn’t called round unexpectedly, chances were he would have died.’

  ‘Have you spoken to him since this afternoon?’

  ‘Yes, Seb’s always very apologetic. He tries to do the right thing, it’s just that . . . Anyway, you aren’t here to listen to me launder the Porteuses’ dirty linen.’

  True enough. I changed the subject. ‘Did your grandfather use to have the whole house?’

  ‘He did,’ Olivia replied, ‘although I let the other floors to businesses, as you probably saw. Alexander dissipated the family fortune, I’m afraid. He was a remarkable man but not astute. The shop and the building were all that was left after my father died. Sebastian wants me to sell this place and give him half the money.’

  All roads seemed to lead to Sebastian Porteus.

  ‘But you’re not keen?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m afraid it wouldn’t do him any good. Our father was of the same opinion. He created a trust fund, of which I’m the executor. Half the money from the rental incomes goes into it. If and when he controls his drug problem, I’ll dissolve the trust and give Seb his money.’

  ‘And the shop?’

  ‘Dad left it to me solely. Another sore point for Sebastian.’

  Olivia’s mobile rang. She fished it out of her pocket and looked at the screen. ‘Sorry, Kenny, I’m not sure who this is. I’d better take it just in case.’

  ‘No problem,’ I said, and she accepted the call.

  ‘Olivia speaking . . . Yes, that’s right . . . No, I’m afraid the shop’s closed at the moment. Tell me the title and I’ll probably know whether we have it in stock.’

  Her tone became diamond-hard.

  ‘That book is not by my grandfather . . . I don’t care what you’ve been told – Alexander Porteus did not write T
he White Tower . . . Then why don’t you ask your alleged expert to track down a copy and do not, repeat do not, call me again.’

  Olivia cut the call and almost threw the phone on to a nearby table. That her grandfather might not be the author of The White Tower was potentially interesting.

  ‘Problem?’ I asked.

  ‘Just some idiot after a first edition of The White Tower.’

  ‘It’s a novel, right?’

  ‘If you can call it that.’

  ‘What’s it about, exactly?’

  ‘A necromancer who uses human sacrifice to extend his life. What makes it doubly irritating is that it’s the major reason people think my grandfather went down the same route, which he most assuredly didn’t.’

  ‘Must be annoying,’ I said.

  ‘Very.’ Olivia looked at her watch, and her expression changed from furious to concerned. ‘Whoops! I’d better get back to the kitchen.’

  ‘Smells like you’re doing a great job,’ I said.

  ‘Let’s hope you aren’t disappointed,’ she replied.

  The beef chasseur was delicious. Olivia served it up in the sitting room, along with the bottle of Tempranillo I’d bought. The prandial conversation was mundane, probably a necessary rebalance after the revelations about her brother. We spoke about how much Soho had changed over the last couple of decades, movies we’d both seen and the different countries Olivia had grown up in.

  Over pudding (white-chocolate lava cake) we shifted gear through books, recycling, the ubiquity of digital media and whether the Brexit vote would result in an early general election. I wondered when we would get on to the subject of Alexander Porteus and the reason I was taking an interest in him. It arose when we vacated the dinner table for the sofa by the window.

  Olivia had put some Miles Davis on the system, turned the lights down and lit half a dozen candles. We were each cradling a venerable Armagnac.

  ‘How did it go with the fertility fetish?’ I asked.

  ‘Badly, I’m afraid,’ Olivia said. ‘Looks like it might be going back to the States.’

  ‘Sad for Jenks.’

  ‘Yes, he had rather set his heart on it.’ She took a sip of brandy. ‘Before my brother’s interruption, we were talking about my grandfather.’

  ‘We were,’ I agreed.

  ‘And that two of your clients had seen him shortly before they died. May I ask who they were?’ Death having removed the need for confidentiality, I was able to supply the information. ‘But you’re still looking into it?’ Olivia asked.

  ‘My brother was a friend of Peter Timms’s. He asked me to carry on.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘Because Malcolm thinks it’s peculiar they both died after seeing your grandfather’s ghost. Or at least what they took to be Alexander Porteus’s ghost.’

  ‘What d’you think?’

  ‘They probably saw something.’

  ‘Why did they assume it was him in the first place?’

  I took Olivia through the 1979 excursion into Highgate Cemetery. She winced a couple of times, especially when I covered off the bit about the recitation from Porteus’s book. ‘What’s happened to the other boys since?’

  ‘One’s done very well in business and the other’s selling used cars. Life’s been a bit tough on the third, and the fourth is a recluse.’

  ‘It might sound like a cliché from a horror movie,’ Olivia said, ‘but it’s dangerous meddling in the occult, especially when you’re young.’

  ‘You think it really was your grandfather?’

  ‘It might have been,’ she said, ‘although it’s not always as simple as that. Dark spirits can manifest in an almost infinite number of guises.’

  It was getting on for eleven by now and things were getting lively in the street below. A glass shattered, followed by a shout and shrieks of male laughter.

  ‘Assuming it was your grandfather or . . . a dark spirit . . . would there be any reason why nothing else happened for the best part of forty years?’

  ‘Probably because it needed one of the original participants to bring it about.’

  ‘By performing another ritual in Highgate?’

  Olivia shrugged. ‘Wherever they were, the person involved would need to know what they were doing. May I get you another drink, Kenny?’

  While Olivia poured us each a refill, I thought about the man who might be capable of inviting her grandfather to put in a second appearance. Was Simon Paxton conjuring the ghost of Alexander Porteus to kill his former classmates?

  Each glass was a third full of brandy. Olivia handed me one of them. ‘Maybe you’re right,’ she said. ‘There’s probably a perfectly simple explanation for the deaths.’

  ‘That’s what the police think.’

  ‘There we are, then. Demonic possession is extremely rare. You should tell your brother he’s wasting his money and your time.’

  Olivia’s perfume and the brandy combined to produce a heady bouquet. We clinked glasses and sipped our drinks.

  ‘How long have you been a private detective, Kenny?’ she asked.

  ‘About six years,’ I said.

  ‘What did you do before?’

  ‘I was in the music business.’

  ‘Managing bands?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  Actually I served in Cheapo’s Records on Rupert Street before it was replaced by a particularly charming bureau de change. Other jobs in my portmanteau career have included: cavity-wall insulator, pest controller, pharmaceutical-trial volunteer, walking-tour guide, artist’s model and journalist. Fortunately Olivia didn’t ask for a CV.

  ‘Married? Kids?’ was what she did ask.

  ‘Neither,’ I said. ‘How about you?’

  ‘I was married for a couple of years to a lawyer, but it didn’t take. Some people aren’t meant to tread the usual path.’ Olivia took a hit on her brandy and left a faint lipstick smudge on the glass. She kicked off her shoes and said, ‘I’ve a feeling that’s the case with you, Kenny.’

  ‘Why’s that?’ I asked.

  ‘Private investigator is a bit of an outsider’s job, isn’t it? Looking in from the margins of life, trying to work out what’s going on and why.’

  This made the day-to-day sound a bit more glamorous than it actually is. More often I’m standing on the margins of an NCP trying to work out where a missing Merc has been parked. No point going against the flow, though . . .

  ‘Yeah, it can get pretty lonely sometimes,’ I said.

  ‘That’s a shame. No one around to cheer you up?’

  ‘Not right now.’

  Olivia squinted. ‘Although I’m guessing there was someone . . . ?’

  ‘Yeah, there was,’ I said. ‘But that’s all over and done with now.’

  Olivia’s thigh was touching mine; her arm draped along the sofa behind my neck. ‘You have an amazing aura,’ she said. ‘Has anyone ever told you that?’

  ‘Not recently,’ I replied.

  ‘Although yours is tinged with black, which isn’t a good sign,’ Olivia continued. ‘That means there’s a degree of negativity or something troubling you.’

  ‘Really?’ I said.

  ‘Really,’ she replied. ‘Perhaps I could help with that . . .’

  Olivia took my glass and placed it on the floor. Her kiss was tantalisingly brief. She pulled away and appraised me like an antiques expert assessing a piece of Meissen porcelain. ‘No, I’m afraid it hasn’t made that much difference,’ she said. ‘I could give it another go if you wanted me to . . .’

  This time the kiss was twenty seconds long. Our tongues intertwined, and various parts of my neural system that had been dark for a long time lit up. Abruptly, Olivia pulled out of the clinch and gave my aura another once-over.

  ‘Mmm . . . It’s a bit better,’ she said. ‘But if we’re going to sort it out entirely, we’re going to have to try a lot harder. Do you want to try harder, Kenny?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ I said.

  T
WENTY-ONE

  Fair to say that I’m not an early bird. Usually the only thing that gets me up before nine is a groaning bladder or Odeerie insisting I travel to a distant part of the Tube network at a client’s behest. The morning after Olivia Porteus ‘cleansed my aura’ was no different. For a few seconds after waking, I wondered whose room I was in.

  Exposed brick walls had been painted white. Over one was arranged a series of antique prints featuring brightly coloured parakeets. Another bore an intricately woven kilim. The furniture comprised a pine chest of drawers, a dressing table and a free-standing wardrobe. Light streamed through diaphanous curtains. The dressing table was strewn with scent bottles and lotion pots, indicating that I was in a woman’s room. My brain immediately supplied the owner’s name. It also served up carnal highlights from the previous night. Sadly the space beside me was unoccupied.

  It had been a habit of Stephie’s to depart before I woke. Another had been never to refer to the fact that we’d slept together in the first place. This didn’t always make for an easy life, and I hoped Olivia wouldn’t pursue the same line.

  My clothes had been neatly folded on a chair. I put my pants and T-shirt on for modesty’s sake, and took a leak in the bathroom. A new toothbrush lay on the basin. After putting it to use, I entered the kitchen and found a scribbled note under a Kellogg’s box.

  Hi Kenny, hope you slept well and help yourself to breakfast. Give me a call this afternoon. Olivia xxx

  Over a bowl of cornflakes, I reviewed the night’s events. At my time of life, the old chap is unpredictable – sometimes he’s game; sometimes he isn’t. Fortunately the booze had helped rather than hindered. And Olivia Porteus naked fully delivered on the promise of Olivia Porteus clothed.

  That a beautiful woman had succumbed in double-quick time to a wizened geezer fifteen years her senior didn’t strike me as unusual. Never underestimate the male ego, is all I can tell you. I followed a second bowl of cornflakes with a coffee. Olivia had washed the dinner things and left them to drain. I was busy transferring the cutlery into the appropriate drawer when a key turned in the front door. Assuming Olivia had left something behind, or even better felt unable to stay away from her demon lover, I wandered into the hallway to be met by the sight of Sebastian Porteus.