by Robert Wilde
Dee and Pohl were sat in their car, looking at the house from out of the windows.
“Do you think he’s forgotten?” Pohl asked.
“I texted him before we left, he’s supposed to be ready and stood on the pavement.”
At that moment the front door to Nazir’s house opened and two men emerged. One was who they expected, the other a muscular black guy they’d never seen before. After a brief hug, one walked away and Nazir came to the car window.
“You didn’t tell me you pulled!” Dee protested.
“If I texted you every time I got a shag I’d break my contract.”
“Don’t start on me, I’m getting fucked regularly now.”
“As you keep reminding me.”
“Well why the fuck not.”
“Are we surprising him with coffee?” Pohl asked.
“Oh yes,” Dee confirmed, “we’ll grab some liquids and some donuts, wake Joe up and take him for a fun day out.”
“Your text message was wrong. It said you’d found a dinosaur themed crazy golf course.”
“That is exactly what I said.”
“Toot toot!”
They arrived at Joe’s a short time later, knocked on the door, and shouted at the windows. He opened them, and he found them grinning and bearing gifts.
“Are you here to cheer me up?”
“Oh yes.”
He shook his head. “Okay, come in, come in, and those better have chocolate.”
They went into the lounge while Joe dressed, then he came down took a bite.
“You look better today.” Pohl commented.
“Thanks. I feel… I feel happier. Now I know the future.”
“That’s excellent!”
“And you’ve not been back?” Dee asked.
“Has my car been back?” Joe returned.
“No it hasn’t,” Nazir confirmed.
“See!”
Something crashed in a different room, and everyone turned and looked.
“Must have fallen off a shelf,” Joe concluded. He wasn’t meeting Dee’s eye.
“Action figures?” Nazir asked, looking keen.
“No, no, just some, err, CDs and stuff.”
There was another crash, and Dee stood. “Sounds like you’ve got a problem.”
“No, no, nothing, it’s n…”
Dee looked at him and realised. “Something’s up.”
“No.”
“You’re worse at lying than a seventies TV presenter,” and she stormed out and up the stairs.
“Dee!”
But there was another sound of something being pushed off a shelf and hitting the floor, and Dee yanked the door open. Then she froze, but just for a moment.
“There’s a fucking bed in here,” she said.
Nazir was following up, “it is a bedroom,” but then he saw.
“There’s a fucking bed from the asylum,” Dee continued.
“It’s shabby chic,” Joe protested at the bottom of the stairs.
“Joe, there is a ghost pushing things off your shelf, and a bed from a place with one ghost in particular. So unless you think I have the brain of a gerbil, shabby chic isn’t going to cut it.”
“I brought her back with me.”
“What did I fucking tell you?”
“I don’t care what you said. I don’t care. I love her, and we’re going to be together, and I want all three of you out of my house now.”
“If we’re leaving we’re taking the bed with us.”
“Joe, Dee,” Pohl said to try and stop things breaking down.
“Get out!” Joe insisted, his face going red.
“No, this is a fucking intervention and you need one badly.”
“Says the mental woman.”
“At least I don’t wank next to a metal bed and a dead woman.”
“I…” he tailed off.
“Let’s not make this personal,” Nazir suggested.
“It’s personal, he’s making a huge mistake.”
Joe made a decision, so he snarled up to them all “well I can’t throw you out, but I’m going myself. I’ll walk round this block, and if you’re not gone when I get back I’m calling the police. Alright?” He turned and stormed out, letting the door smash shut, glass shaking but just staying intact.
“This is not going well,” was all Nazir could say.
“That could have gone much better,” Pohl added, wondering what people were supposed to do in these situations.
“He’s left the machine, let’s go and get it.”
“Dee, we can’t take his machine from him!”
“We are not stealing his machine,” Dee explained, “we are going to use it.”
“Are you going to shout at her now?”
“Oh am I, hold onto your clothes.”
Dee soon had the machine by the old bed and turned it on.
“Right you strangled cunt, listen to me, stop seducing our friend and making him a fucking ghost loving weirdo.”
“He’s in a lot of danger.”
“And don’t you try to…what did you just say?”
“You’ve got to help him, he’s going to do something stupid.”
“He’s done that already.”
“He’s going to kill himself!”
That silenced Dee.
“Is he?” Pohl asked.
“He wants to be with me. He wants to be a ghost with me and you’ve got to stop him.”
“Hang on,” Nazir said, “you don’t want him to?”
“Why would I? I don’t want his life cut short like mine, I want him to live. He’s getting obsessed and toxic and you need to stop him. And… and I don’t love him, I just can’t bear to tell him I don’t.”
“Okay people, I may have fucked up badly on this one,” Dee admitted.
“Why would he want to kill himself?” Pohl asked out loud.
“His mind is ill. He’s seeing only darkness, he is consumed by bleakness, he sees no other route. This, this depression is…”
“He’s got depression.”
“Must be.”
“…grinding him away.”
Dee put her head in her hands. “He needs help, not shouting at. Fuckity fuck fuck what have I done.”
“We better find him,” Nazir suggested, looking at the door.
“He said he’d come back to throw us out.”
“I know Dee, but what if he doesn’t?”
“Okay, okay, we better split up and find him. It’s all roads round here, no backstreet paths, you take his car, I’ll take mine and Professor you stay in case he returns.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
Dee drove her car round a corner and saw Joe walking ahead of her facing away. Well it would be me, she thought, before deciding she was the one who had to do this. The car was parked up, Dee got out and walked quickly so she fell in beside Joe.
“I’m sorry,” she said as Joe turned to see who it was, “I really am. I had no idea, and if I could do it again I’d do it differently.”
“Bit late for that.”
“No, it’s not, because you’re still alive. There’s still time.”
“She told you did she, told you my plan.”
“Yes, she did. And she also told me something else: she doesn’t want you to do it. Not now, not ever.”
“I know, she doesn’t want me to die so soon, but it’s for the best.”
“She doesn’t want you to die Joe because she doesn’t love you.”
“What? No, no, that’s not true,” and he hissed the last part.
“We can go back and ask her. She’s lonely Joe, lonely and afraid, and you’re welcome in her life, but she doesn’t really love you.”
Joe stopped and balled his fists, putting them to his temples. “Not her as well. Not her too, why does this always happen, why always me…”
“But you’re similar to Polly aren’t you Joe. You’re lonely and afraid and she was welcome in your life.”
“Why
can’t I just find someone…”
“Joe, what you’re feeling, it isn’t about being single, it’s deeper than that. You’re depressed, clinically depressed, and it’s making you feel like hell. You’re in love with the idea of dying, not her, and you would be without her. It’s not her that’s making you feel suicidal, it’s within you. You need help, to talk to someone, maybe to take some pills, to get you on an even keel.”
“Easy for you to write my pain off.”
“Write it off? I’ve been from psychiatrist to psychiatrist, I don’t mention them lightly. But you've got a health problem that can be targeted and helped. It’s a real, known thing. They, we, can all help you. We’d taken our eyes off you, not realised how ground down you were, but now we know we can be there when you need it. I’m not telling you to cheer up Joe, that’s stupid, I’m saying there’s a world of support we can for you, we can help you with.”
“And Polly?”
“Polly is a friend. She can support you too. We’re here for you.”
Joe turned, embraced Dee and began to weep on her shoulder. She hugged him back, felt him shudder, and knew how close she’d come to losing him.
“I don’t want to die Dee, I just don’t see any other way.”
“We’ll help you find those ways, we will, we will. Whatever we need to do to help you, we’ll do it.”
Joe eventually put Dee down, the crying stopped, and they walked slowly back to the car. He asked her about therapy, she decided to give him a sugar coated appraisal based on Pohl’s experiences, not her own, and Joe seemed to lighten slightly, a new way forward being presented. But Joe wanted most of all to talk with Polly, so that’s where they went, tasking Pohl with recalling Nazir.
“Hi,” Joe said, quietly.
“They found you.”
“Yes, yes they did.
“I’m so glad. Very much.”
“ Is it true?”
“That… that I don’t love you?”
“Yes.” She couldn’t read his voice.
“Yes. I love you as a friend Joe, and I don’t want to be alone again, but I don’t love you like that. Not as a girlfriend. And I want you to stay alive.”
He sighed. “I know, I know, and I’m going to, I’m going to get help, Dee knows where to go.”
“Good. Just stay out of asylums.”
“Thank you for speaking to them, for saying something.”
“I had to. Get the help I didn’t, live the life I didn’t.”
“I will. And I think I really only love you as a friend too. I just don’t want to lose someone who understands.”
“I know, but your friends do now you’ve told them. They’re good people, they just needed to be let inside.”
Everyone paused, away in their thoughts, before “So what now?” Dee asked.
“I don’t think I should stay here,” Polly said, “but I don’t want to go back to the asylum either. I need to be somewhere where I can see people. Is that possible?”
“Yes,” Pohl smiled behind them, “it is possible.”
The bed had been stripped back to metal and painted a warm colour, and was now sat in the foyer of a hotel. The building was relatively small, but kept in immaculate condition and filled with art and fascinating objects. The owner, who was no less immaculate and a fascinating object, was walking round it, looking at it.
“A little austere,” he said as he bent down to look at the underside.
“That’s part of the effect, true vintage from the era.” Dee smiled sweetly.
“I understand, and I think it would be excellent in one of our rooms. I’ve never seen one with quite this construction before, it’s almost as if you could tie things to it.”
“It came from a hospital,” Joe explained, “you’re getting the real thing.”
“A hospital? I see, I see. Well I do like it, but it all depends on the price, of course.”
“We know your hotel is small but very busy, so we’d be prepared to let it go for a hundred pounds.”
“A hundred…would you do eighty?”
“Hmm, we trust you to look after it, give it a good home…”
“Oh yes, of course, I’ll theme a whole room around it.”
“In that case eighty is fine.”
Dee and Joe turned to smile at each other, and Polly smiled at them too.
Eleven: The Cage
“I can’t believe we’re reduced to this,” Nazir complained as he stepped out of Dee’s car and looked around.
“We are not reduced to anything, this is a good idea.” Dee was getting out of the driver’s position, and she looked round at the target before them.
“It’s like going to your customers instead of waiting for them to go to you,” Joe explained.
“You sound like someone off the Apprentice. Both of you.”
“I watch the Apprentice,” Pohl revealed.
“I suppose there aren’t enough tentacles for Joe” Dee smiled at him.
“That’s Hentai, I watch science fiction.”
Dee was going to make a comment along the lines of ‘you watch it you lying perv’, but the situation was still one of recovery for Joe, so she left it alone.
“The key thing is not to seem suspicious as we walk around,” Dee instructed instead, “keep as a group, as if we’re talking to ourselves.” Then she turned and walked into the graveyard.
It felt large, seeing as there was row after row of headstones in a monochromatic white, black or grey. Colour was provided by the neatly cut green grass and the flowers left behind. A few people were already walking to the graves of their loved ones, but the quartet started on a slow circuit of the place.
“I still think we should be checking strip joints and nightclubs.” The others shook their head at Nazir. “Look, if I find a lovely restaurant, we are so checking that out.”
“Someone shot a pizza boy at his shop the other day, that doesn’t mean we’re going there.”
“Pizza?”
“Shit pizza.”
The machine now started to hum with a background chatter, so Joe asked a hesitant, “can we help anybody? We’re private investigators.”
A few spirits came over to have a nose, and soon the group were informed the handful of spirits which inhabited this graveyard were following them.
“Would you be able to tell me if Liverpool have won a title since 2001?” one asked.
“Err, yes, Nazir can google that for you, but basically we’re focused on crimes that need solving.”
“Like murder?” one voice asked.
“Exactly like murder,” and Joe said proudly, “we have a great success rate in locking murderers up.” He left off ‘in a mortuary.’
“Good, I was killed,” the voice said matter of factly.
“You were?”
“Yes. Quite recently.”
“When?”
“Six months ago.”
“You could have told me the football results all this time?”
“Let’s stick to the matter in hand,” Dee said. “Who killed you?”
“My wife was having an affair with a boy from her school.”
“Doesn’t that only happen in the movies?”
“He was under age and all, so you should be able to get her bang to rights.”
Don’t people only say that in films? They all thought.
“Right, give us the details and we’ll get solving. How did he kill?”
“Stabbed me. My last memory is bleeding out on the kitchen floor we’d just had installed.”
“I hope you had Lino.”
“That’s not helping Nazir.”
There came a knocking at his door, so Chairman Malveo shouted ‘come in’, at which point his secretary opened the door.
“Ah, Steve, how nice to see you, is there a message for me?”
Malveo wasn’t exhibiting Sherlock Holmes like power, Steve was holding a sheet of paper.
“Yes sir, just been sent in.”
“And wh
o will I be reading,” he said thrusting a hand out, into which the paper was swiftly shoved.
“It’s from our team monitoring the graveyards. He’s discovered some suspicious activity.”
Malveo’s face raised both eyebrows and couldn’t decide whether to be interested or annoyed.
“Let me take a quick look,” and he skimmed the paper. “This doesn’t look like spiritual activity, he looks like real people.”
“That’s correct sir. Our agent has spotted a group of four, two men, two women, one of non-traditional British heritage, visiting many of our target sites.”
“How many,” Malveo asked reading in more detail.
“Actually, all of them.”
“I can see why that would be a cause for concern. However, if I am reading this correctly, I would be forced to conclude they were a bunch of ghost hunters. Nothing more than useless, EMF detector waving, orb spotting ghost hunters of no interest to the project.” He sounded like his cat had just vomited up a bird on his shoes.
“I also feel that way sir, but I have to bring you anything of interest.”
“Oh, of course, of course. Keep up the good work, but file this under no threat.”
“Do you think we should get a promise of payment before we solve the mystery or after?” Dee pondered as she swung the car into the graveyard.
“Rather than relying on people’s generosity?” Pohl checked.
“Yes. It seems to me people are just as stingy in the afterlife as they are in real life. We need to start charging, getting an up-front fee system.”
“You really have been watching the Apprentice.”
“Shut up Nazir.”
“The problem is,” Joe explained, “that the dead don’t have many assets. Not everyone had some money hidden under a floorboard, all they have is what they were buried in. We need a better way of turning talking to the dead into cash.”
“We are not holding séances,” Dee protested.
“I’m not saying séances. I… well…”
“We’re here, let’s get the good news out there.”
The group climbed out and walked into the middle of the graveyard, where a cluster of benches had been paced for the grieving.
