by Robert Wilde
“We’ve been to six of the murder sites, and spoken to four ghosts. All gave descriptions of people who definitely weren’t Ralph Spall. So we’d conclude, from our end, that he’s lying about a shitload of these.”
“I agree with you Joe, with all of you, he’s lying. Probably about a lot of them.”
“Why would he do that?” Dee asked.
“Have you seen him on television? He loves this court case being in the news. Loves the attention. And when I saw him, saw his face, I think he loves being a serial killer too. But no one pays attention if you kill two or three hookers, not a month later. So somehow he claimed all these very real murders as his own, and he became famous.”
“What a toss sock” Joe exclaimed.
“Do people actually use those?”
“Focus Nazir, focus” Dee said.
Maquire was thinking out loud. “He wants them to be his because he won’t deny them. But he didn’t actually do them.”
“What do you do now?” Dee asked.
Maquire tilted his head at the wall. “That murder there, why is there an address and a name on it?”
“The deceased knew who killed him. The marvellously titled Tom Kipper.”
“Kipper?”
“Yes.”
“Sure he wasn’t having you on?”
“He’s still in the phone book at the address we were given.”
“Oh really…now that’s very interesting.”
“What are you thinking?”
“I might go pay Mr Kipper a visit.”
Maquire couldn’t force somebody into the station on the word of a ghost, but he could go round and ask a few questions. Which was how he parked his unmarked car up outside the Kipper residence and knocked on the door.
It was late afternoon, and a man opened it, late forties, with the largest facial hair Maquire had ever seen.
“Oh, wow.”
“Thank you, I enter competitions. Now who are you?”
“I…oh, I can smell fish, are you having tea?”
“Yes, I was.” He also wasn’t happy.
“It’s kipper…”
“Don’t you start n’all.”
“Sorry, right, I’m Detective Inspector Maquire and I’d like to ask you a few questions.”
The man’s face plummeted as if the gravity had changed. “Am I being arrested?”
“No, but if you’d be so kind as to invite me in and answer me?”
Kipper turned, looking like a man already condemned. Maquire scented blood, but was still amazed at how easy it went.
“I’d like to speak to you about the murder of Nick Dolan. The police interviewed you about this, didn’t they?”
“I, err, I’d run off with his wife.”
“Yes. You didn’t have an alibi.”
“No. Err, but no evidence.”
“Not at that point. But Kipper, did you…”
“Oh Jesus,” and he dropped to his knees, which at least spared Maquire having to watch him weep, which he now did. “I knew it wouldn’t stay hidden for ever. I knew someone would find out. I knew it. And here you are. And she didn’t even stay with me the bitch.”
“Are you confessing to me the murder of Nick Dolan?”
“Yes, yes, yes!”
Well that certainly makes the paperwork easier. But it’s not going to make the next meeting any better.
Maquire had returned to his office and organised a meeting of both his team and his superiors, which was taking place now. As the DCI and the Superintendent were present the best coffee the station could provide was served, which meant almost a full barista service. Someone had naively bought biscuits, which were eaten in the first five minutes.
“Thank you for coming today everyone. What I’ve got could be both very high profile and damaging. It all started,” he couldn’t resist, “when I travelled to meet a dying man. He’d asked for a detective to be sent, I was that man, and he confessed a murder to me. It was one known to the police, and we were able to match an item of clothing found hidden in his attic to one removed from the crime scene.”
“Some problem,” Bear interrupted.
“It looks like the confessor killed the victim, but here is the problem. Ralph Spall is currently serving part of his sentence for that killing, which he confessed to many times.” There were whistles. Everyone knew Spall.
“It’s possible Spall lied about this case, so I dug up some of the others. One concerned a Nick Dolan, who Spall told everyone he killed, but on reading the file I was struck by how largely a Mr. Kipper featured in the investigator’s thoughts. So I went to have a small chat, and his conscience has been destroying him. He broke down the moment I mentioned the name and has recently given a full confession. Which means Spall lied about that too. It is my contention that every single one of Spall’s killings ought to be reopened and examined, because they are all suspect.”
“Do you realise the gravity of your suggestion?” The DCI asked.
“Yes Ma'am. I am calling into question the integrity of the investigating team.”
“Maquire, the man’s a nutter,” a detective tried to inform him. “You can’t defend him over us. If it walks like a duck and walks like a duck…”
“We’re the police, it’s our job to check it’s a fucking duck.”
“This will be big. Very big,” and the DCI turned to the Superintendent, who just nodded. “This is what we’ll do. Maquire, you will head up a new team dedicated to cracking this, you will examine every single thing in those files, and when you’re sure, very sure, you will make a report. If people got things wrong, we have to be completely certain.”
“We will be. Oh we will be.”
A week later and Maquire had a call. It’s was Spall’s lawyer - a man growing considerably fat off government money for trying to get his client executed - saying that the killer wanted to speak to Maquire, and speak urgently. The opportunity was too much to pass up, even though the DI knew he’d be the next part in whatever fantasy Spall was dreaming up, and he was soon being allowed into the hated prison.
This time the situation was different, as the lawyer was in the room when Maquire arrived, and no one was serving that arsehole coffee. Maquire was collateral damage.
“What’s this about?” It seemed a fair question.
“My client wishes to tell you that himself.”
Spall was shown in later, but something was different. He wasn’t bouncing, nor grinning. Wasn’t filled with devilish confidence. In fact he looked uncertain.
“Mr Spall.”
“Detective Inspector.”
“Nice of you to come at my beck and call.” He tried a smile, but Maquire saw through it.
“What do you want to say?”
“You might have heard, my appeal to the EU has been rejected. I have nowhere else to go. No execution, I die in jail.”
“Indeed. I‘m not sure I’m allowed to express an opinion.”
“Let’s try something else then. You’ve reopened all my old murders.”
Maquire didn’t flinch, but he did begin to ponder who the mole was. “Why would you think that?”
“Because it’s true. You have already found evidence and gained confessions that two of my killings were done by someone else, and you’re working on all the rest.”
“I expect you have a comment on this rumour?”
“Yes. I confess I did none of my killings. I made it all up.”
Now Maquire flinched. He wasn’t expecting it to be this… easy. “How? Why?”
“The police pulled me in over one killing. It wasn’t me, but it got me thinking. This was one way to be famous, to be known, and I’d read a lot about murder over the years, so I started confessing. And your stupid colleagues bought me death after death to ask me about, and I told them I did them all.” Now he was grinning, and Maquire realised why. There wasn’t going to be an execution, just a prison stabbing, and Spall would be unmasked by Maquire soon enough. So he was taking the initiative, turning himself int
o something else, either a great miscarriage of justice or a triumphant lunatic who fooled people for years. He was going to go down in history all right, and he probably hadn’t touched a single person.
And Maquire was doing it. It was basically his fault. Spall wouldn’t stop until everyone who’d screwed up was dragged through the shit, the stinking, pestilent dog shit.
Dee opened her door. It was midday, and she’d got important breakfast to make.
“Ah,” she said, finding Maquire.
“Hello Dee.”
“You sound knackered.”
“I’m ruining people’s careers and getting the sentence reduced on a total arsehole. It’s not been a good time.”
“Sorry to hear that.” She realised she was. “But people are going to prison?”
“To trial, but yes, probably to prison. We’re rounding up. I’ve never commanded a unit this big.”
“Good, good,” and she realised she was looking at the ground.
“Dee, I’ve come to apologise, and ask…”
“You want to be friends?” She said it to show she wasn’t keen.
“Not yet. I know it’s too soon. I just, I just want us to be good colleagues at first, okay, able to work together on all this stuff. And if we can become friends after that, then okay, but no pressure. But you’ve seen all the good this has done…”
“You just described a shitstorm.”
“Alright, but you know what I mean. The right people are being punished. What more can I aim for? And we got our head start because of you and your team. I need to be able to work with you. So please, can we be good colleagues?”
“Given that you still work with that cumbubble Bear I think, relatively speaking, we already are.”
“Dee…” he didn’t know what else to say.
“Okay, okay. We can be colleagues. But you’re to erase all your mental images of my tits.”
“Already done.”
“Good.” She didn’t believe him, he was a bloke after all.
Thirteen: The Wait Is Over
Doctor James was very much learning as he went along. He’d previously worked on projects requiring great secrecy for government sponsored firms, but these had all developed organically: they’d be set a task, have the idea, pushed the state of human knowledge further. But now things were different, and James felt he’d been dropped into this project halfway through. Because he had.
A team had been formed, a lab space had been given on a military base, and there had been rumours that the previous occupants had overstepped the mark and been punished as a result. But the past didn’t matter, solving the problem mattered, which was why James was surrounded by machines, computers and his handwritten notes.
To the right of him were two robotic arms, although they didn’t operate through computer commands. Each had been created to the designs he’d inherited to allow themselves to be controlled by a soul. Yes, a disembodied survival of human consciousness could move the arms, and James had to kick himself every day, although this meant literally slapping his face when he woke to make sure he’d woken.
That was the halfway point he’d dropped into, and his team of experts had swiftly reproduced the effect and then expanded the project. There had been plans for a leg, which was built and which hung down below a table filled with wires and devices, and this could move, they’d even had it going along a treadmill.
The apogee of the project was behind him, and it was giving him problems. When he’d first read the brief he’d had one overwhelming idea, and as the head of a multi-million pound research budget you got to indulge those ideas, and so they built what they’d dubbed the ‘Construct’. It wasn’t an arm, or a leg, it was a whole human body that could be controlled by the soul of the dead. Okay, it didn’t look much, all metal, wires and hydraulics, but it was a test piece. They could smarten it up and skin it later if they wanted.
The problem was it didn’t work. The arms had worked, the legs had worked, but the construct refused to move. And the issue seemed to be spreading, because now the arms and legs had stopped.
Frustrated and at a loss to explain what was happening, wondering where his tame ghosts had gone, James and an assistant were checking and rechecking everything for a solution.
This meant they weren’t looking at the Construct, which began to move slowly behind them. First the fingers twitched, then the knees took the weight, and then the construct stepped forward. James heard something behind and turned, and the Construct put its powerful hands around his throat and squeezed until his head popped off in a bloody mess. The assistant, warned, tried to run for the door but tripped, and found the Construct standing over it, hands still bloody, face totally emotionless.
“You’re grinning like a loon, that usually means something bad is happening,” Dee observed as Nazir came through the door waving a piece of paper.
“Oh you’re going to love this,” he said meaning entirely the opposite.
“Come in, sit down, let’s see what hell you have found for us.”
Everyone else was sipping cocktails perfect for a summer’s day, and Nazir was soon issued with one.
“Does this have a sexual name?” he asked looking at the drink.
“Let’s get to the paper.”
“Okay, okay, I have found something interesting for us to do. It’s an Australian Outback Dining Night.”
“A what?”
“You know that television show where not really famous people eat insects and grubs and kangaroo anus for publicity?”
“Oh Jesus.”
“Well you can go to one of those, only it’s local and £20 a head.”
“The only grotesque bit of flesh I’m putting in my mouth is a penis,” Dee explained rather forcefully.
But Nazir had a reply to that “which is also on the menu.”
“A human penis!”
“I take it you’re all raring to go and join in?”
“Are we talking eyeballs?” Joe asked.
“Yes.”
“I’d prefer a kebab and chips.”
“I’m sure there’s a joke in there somewhere,” Dee mused.
“So none of you want to be adventurous with your eating?”
“To be frank Nazir,” Pohl explained, “I have enough adventure in my life without making it edible.”
“Well you’ll be pleased to know I haven’t booked any tickets.”
“You can still go,” Dee told him.
“I’m not going on my own.”
“Don’t you have any other friends?”
“Not for more than an evening, no.”
“I almost feel sorry for you.”
“Thanks.”
“Almost. You need to learn to have a relationship…”
“La la la, I can’t hear you.” Nazir thought it was better than pointing out Dee couldn’t hold down a relationship any better either.
At this point everyone was saved by Dee’s phone ringing, and she looked at the called, then wrinkled her nose up. “It’s Peters.”
“MI5 Peters?”
“Yes, and he’s calling us…” which meant something was happening; the contact had never gone that way before.
“Dee here, is that you Peters?”
“Yes, yes, how are you?”
“I’m good thanks, but intrigued you’ve rung.”
“Excellent. Look Dee, I need you to send the bat signal for me.”
“The what?”
“Call your group, however you get them together.”
“Actually we’re all here.”
“Ooh, good, are you all free?”
Dee looked at the group. “To be honest we don’t have plans beyond sitting here and making cocktails up.”
“Good, I need you to get to the labs as quickly as possible. I can send a car if necessary.”
“Something’s wrong?” She wasn’t asking, it didn’t take a genius to work out something was wrong, she just wanted to give him an opening to explain.
“Yes, and we need your machine to answer a few questions.”
Dee tilted the phone from her head and said “we’re being called, prepare to scramble.” Then she put the phone back to her head. “And how many people have died so far?”
“Six.”
As the evening had been young and Dee had only had one cocktail she decided she was okay to drive and they went straight to Peters’ base, if you consider two stops for coffee as straight. The security official had been briefed, saw the foursome, checked them out and waved them straight through while also calling Peters, and as Dee parked up they saw a familiar figure approaching them.
“Hello Dee,” he said, as he shook everyone’s hands. It was dark but clear and they looked at the buildings stretching away in front of them.
“Everything in order?” Joe asked.
“We changed a few things after observing what Nazir did, so our security system can only be controlled if you’re sat at the station inside the base.”
“Very wise” Nazir admitted.
“It was until someone was sat at the station.”
“What?”
“Bring your machine and I’ll brief you as we walk. My original project is still managing the Array, but since your actions I’m in charge of another project, the one linking souls to cybernetics. We haven’t built a speaking machine, but we have built a sort of robot device that souls can move. We call it the Construct.”
“You are making progress.”
“Yes, but we still need your machine.”
“Someone was murdered?”
“Yes, they were.” He sounded unusually grim.
“How does someone get killed on a military base?” Joe asked.
“Well, you see all those guards? And that wire? It’s to keep people out. Unfortunately, something that was already in went the other way.”
By now they were walking through corridors, and Peters let them into a room. Large, open plan, its contents was recognisable because of the robotic arms, and legs.
“This is where two of our scientists were killed, the pair leading the project. We’ve passed sites of other deaths.”
Joe, becoming a dab hand at this sort of thing, knew what was happening. “You said something broke out. And this Construct isn’t in here… so?”
