by Sophie Green
‘All sounds perfectly above board to me.’ She gave him a cynical look.
‘I’ve got some urgent business at that new research facility and I can’t seem to get an invite.’
‘I’m a hot dog seller. What makes you think I can lay my hands on that kind of material?’
Abe eyed her sternly. ‘Minnie, what you don’t know about Peligan City isn’t worth knowing.’
She frowned back at him and dropped her voice. ‘If I go looking for information like that, out of the blue and time-sensitive, it’s going to cause a ripple –’ She broke off suddenly. ‘Hey, Lenny.’
A man in a long woollen coat and a military cap shuffled out from the shadows. He kept his head bent low and asked in a quiet voice, ‘Got any throwaways, Minnie?’
Minnie’s hard eyes softened. She surveyed the line of perfect bangers sizzling on the hotplate and then selected a fat one. ‘Here, this fellow got a bit burnt on the side.’ She dropped it in a bun for him. The man dipped his eyes gratefully as he turned. Minnie watched him go and the soft look had an edge of anger in it.
She kept her voice low. ‘Look, detective, none of us are far from the gutter in this town. If I start asking too many questions, I might make things awkward for myself. Draw the wrong kind of attention.’
‘You know what, Minnie?’ Abe growled. ‘Everyone’s got something to lose, but sooner or later we’re all going to have to stand up for what we believe in or move aside and let Peligan City slide into the mud.’
Minnie gave Abe a hard stare of her own and then dropped it with an I-should-know-better shake of her head. ‘Tell you what, I’ll lift up a few rocks, see what’s under them. But just keep it on the down-low, right?’ She sighed. ‘See you tomorrow. If I can find anything, I’ll have it by then.’
Chapter 15
The Team Works
The following afternoon the music in the Nite Jar had dropped tempo to a laid-back swing as Lil piled into the booth next to Nedly, and Abe took his seat opposite. Margaret got into position by his feet under the table. Yoshi was wiping the steam off the windows, the water spots he left behind catching the light from passing cars.
‘So.’ Lil laced her fingers together and flexed her arms. ‘Who are we expecting – for the crack team?’
‘Did I say crack team?’ Abe rubbed his jaw with his rubber hand. ‘I don’t remember using those terms exactly.’
‘Crack team of specialists,’ Lil reminded him.
Abe puckered his lips out like a duck’s bill. ‘Well …’
There was a knock on the window and a face appeared, surrounded by the tight green hood of a waterproof poncho. Yoshi jumped and cried out. Starkey’s face fell. He ran quickly into the cafe, skidded on some wet footprints and lurched at Yoshi crying, ‘I’m so sorry! What a numbskull!’
‘It’s fine,’ said Yoshi, smiling.
‘Good of you,’ said Starkey, pumping Yoshi’s hand, which still held the wet cloth.
‘What can I get you?’
‘I’m just here to meet up, with some … friends.’ Starkey edged his way to the booth where Abe and Lil were sitting.
‘Hello,’ he said when he reached them, and slid in next to Abe.
There was a pause.
‘Is this everyone?’ Lil asked, trying not to sound disappointed.
‘Hey, Mandrel!’ Minnie came through the door and crossed the floor like a gunslinger slowly and with her gaze sliding from side to side to check who was where. She was wearing her trapper hat and gold hoop earrings and her jaw worked absent-mindedly over the gum she was chewing. Wisps of wet hair clung to the rain on her face. She was carrying something in her pocket and drew it out when she reached them. It was a hot dog bun.
She held the bun out to Abe and he took hold but Minnie didn’t let go. ‘Be careful, detective. I don’t know what you’ve got yourself wrapped up in but –’
‘We’ll be fine,’ Abe assured her, squidging the bun as he tried to extract it.
Minnie kept a tight hold. ‘We go back a long way, Mandrel, and you’ve always been a good man.’ Abe started to shrug. ‘No, you have. A little shabby maybe, but … I still remember when they used to call you the Scourge of the Underworld.’
‘That is a long way back.’ Abe rubbed his grizzled chin.
‘I know you’ve had a few knocks, but a few months back, when you helped take down Le Teef and exposed the corruption at City Hall –’
‘Some of it,’ Lil chipped in.
‘Indeed. Reminded me of the old days. And then yesterday, there you were asking me for plans and details and I ask myself, is something big going down? Is Mandrel onto something?’
‘It’s just for a case I’m working on.’
Minnie nodded at Starkey. ‘All of you?’
‘It’s a big case.’
Minnie nodded again. ‘And what you were saying about people needing to step up and all that …’
‘What do you want, Minnie?’
‘I want in.’ She slid into the booth next to Starkey, who squashed further into Abe. ‘What’s the plan?’
‘You won’t like it.’ Lil took a steadying breath. ‘So, before we tell you, you need to know that this is about protecting the Final Ghost. We’re on his side.’
Minnie stopped chewing her gum and looked askance at Lil. ‘You’re going to tell me he’s one of the good guys too – right?’
‘The best,’ said Lil, and she flicked a warm look at Nedly.
Minnie sighed. She took off her cap and rubbed some life into her auburn hair. ‘You know, I was there that night at the Wheel of Fortune, when the Final Ghost struck. I was playing the slots.’ She eyeballed Lil and Abe in turn. ‘You didn’t know that about me, did you? If it wasn’t for that place I would have had myself a hot dog restaurant by now.’ She smiled bitterly and gave her gum a good chew.
‘Now in all my time at the Wheel I’ve never seen anyone beat the house, and they say that the Final Ghost was behind it. It looked to me like the ghost fixed that machine so the lady would get lucky for once. It looked to me like maybe he was trying to do something good – not trying to spook people like everybody is saying.’ Nedly’s cheeks blushed a soft grey and his eyes shone.
‘That got me thinking,’ Minnie continued. ‘I don’t like the way things are run in this town, never have, and we all know that that Herald just prints whatever City Hall wants it to. Now, I can’t say I’m a hundred per cent comfortable with the idea of a ghost here in Peligan, but if the Herald says that it’s the enemy, then I’m inclined to believe the opposite, and now if you’re saying the ghost is all right too …’ She looked at Abe for reassurance and got it with a tilt of his head. ‘… then he’s all right with me.’ She shrugged and pulled her hat back on. ‘When do I get to meet him?’
‘How about now?’ Lil caught Minnie’s gaze and then used her eyes to point to the place where Nedly was sitting.
Minnie shivered involuntarily and her chewing gum fell out of her mouth. She put it back in quickly, looked at the empty space beside Lil and said, ‘Pleased to meet you,’ with a grin, then she shrugged her bodywarmer up with her shoulders and buried her chin in the neck of it.
Nedly raised his hand in a shy unseen wave.
‘OK, so –’ Abe and Lil said at the same time, then they both laughed.
Abe said, ‘You go.’
Lil replied, ‘No, you go. You’ve done this sort of thing before, right? When you were a police detective, special operations. And takedowns and missions …’
Abe tried to shrug it off bashfully and held up his rubber hand. ‘I don’t know about all that –’
Margaret laid a paw on his knee and looked faithfully up at him and Nedly gave him an encouraging smile that Abe couldn’t see. Nevertheless he loosened his tie, cleared his throat, took a sip of water and began:
‘OK.’ He looked over his shoulder and as he leaned forward across the table, the others did too. ‘So, as Lil was saying, this concerns our friend.’ He nodded soberly to th
e corner where Nedly sat, his eyes darting a question to Lil just to be sure he was still definitely there.
Abe prised open the hot dog bun and pulled out the tightly rolled map inside it. He spread it out over the table and they all held a corner down with the tips of their fingers. ‘Our friend is in trouble: everyone’s scared of him and Ghostcatcher are closing in. They’ve developed some kind of technology to track him down and now time is running out before they catch up with him and … We’re looking at a –’ he dropped his voice – ‘a covert operation out at the old asylum at Rorschach, which is where the Ghostcatcher facility is located. It houses a machine called EGON.’
‘Electromagnetic Geospatial Orientation Network,’ explained Starkey.
‘That’s what we need to destroy,’ confirmed Lil.
‘What are you lot whispering about?’ said Velma as she put the tray down on the table.
Everyone scrambled to cover the map as they reached onto the tray and started unloading the pot of coffee, glasses of milk and a huge plate of assorted pastries.
Velma narrowed her eyes at it. ‘What’s that you’ve got? Looks like some kind of map? You’re not planning a robbery, are you?’ They laughed, for slightly too long, and Starkey even pretended to wipe his eyes.
Velma stood waiting. ‘Well?’ she said finally.
‘No way,’ said Lil.
‘We’re just chewing the fat,’ said Abe.
Velma held out her hand and the gang turned out their pockets to pool enough money together to cover the bill. She picked up the coins, muttering, ‘Have it your own way,’ and returned to the counter to watch them from behind the glass cake domes.
Abe continued, ‘To get to EGON we need a clear run of the facility so we’ll have to draw Ghostcatcher into the city and away from the old asylum. We need to trick them into a safe spot where we can control things. Somewhere familiar; public but not too public.’
They all thought hard and Lil looked up at Nedly and then at Velma at the counter. ‘How about here?’
Yoshi and Velma pulled up seats. They looked at the space in the corner and didn’t query why Lil hadn’t budged up.
‘The way it is,’ Abe told them, ‘we need you to lure someone to the Nite Jar, and then keep them here as long as possible.’
‘Like a kidnapping?’ Velma looked accusingly at Starkey. ‘I don’t know what this fellow has got you mixed up in but –’
‘No, that sounded worse than it is,’ said Lil. ‘We just need a distraction and we wondered about here?’
‘What kind of distraction?’
‘We just need to bounce some electromagnetic energy around.’
‘Will it damage the fittings?’
They all looked at Starkey and he shook his head, confidently at first and then less so.
Velma frowned but Yoshi said, ‘Why?’
‘To help out a friend.’ Lil took a big gulp of milk.
Yoshi gave her a look. ‘Does it have anything to do with that ghost that you hang around with?’
‘Whaaat!’ Lil sprayed the milk all across the map and then pulled handfuls of serviettes out of the dispenser and started blotting wildly. ‘Why – why would you say that?’
Yoshi shrugged. ‘I’ve just seen you talking to yourself, sometimes you buy two of something, and you always leave a seat free when you’re here. Just like you have now. Velma thought maybe you just liked talking to yourself.’ Velma nodded in confirmation. ‘But I wondered if maybe there was more to it.’
Velma added, ‘We don’t read the Herald but we’ve both had the creeps now and then; who hasn’t?’ Starkey’s eyes lowered miserably to his hot chocolate. ‘But it’s nothing we can’t handle. We do know you, Lil Potkin, so if you were to tell us that the reason we’re feeling a bit spooky right now is that there is a ghost sitting here in the booth with us and it –’
‘He,’ Lil corrected her.
‘If he is a friend of yours and he’s in trouble –’ Yoshi looked at Velma for approval and she nodded – ‘that’s good enough for us. What do you need?’
‘OK,’ said Abe. ‘Thank you.’
‘Lil,’ said Nedly. ‘Would you – you know.’ He nodded towards Yoshi and Velma.
‘Right. Abe could you do some introductions?’ Lil smiled encouragingly.
Abe cleared his throat. ‘Yoshi, Velma.’ He opened his hand towards them and then used his rubber fingers to point at the empty seat beside Lil. ‘This is …’ He nodded. ‘You know, The One.’
‘Nedly,’ said Lil.
‘Yep,’ said Abe.
Starkey said, ‘He’s a spectral manifestation.’
Lil said, ‘He’s a kid, like me. He likes comics and animals and he helps Abe out with investigations.’
Minnie gave her gum a determined chew. ‘Nedly’s the name of the ghost, right?’
‘Right,’ Lil and Abe said at the same time.
There was a pause. Nedly whispered, ‘Everyone is staring at me.’
Lil looked round the table. Except for Abe, each eye was fixed on the corner where Nedly sat. ‘It’s no use,’ she told them, ‘you can’t see him no matter how hard you look.’
‘I was wondering,’ said Yoshi shyly, pushing the condiments towards Lil, ‘could Nedly move the pepper pot to the left? Just so we know he’s really here.’
Lil sighed. A pulse of light travelled to the tip of Nedly’s finger and the pepper pot slid to the left and fell over. Everyone shivered.
Velma chipped in, ‘Could Nedly lift it into the air? Hover it?’
The pepper pot flipped up and then continued, into the air until it was wobbling about at shoulder height. They gasped. Nedly was grinning so hard he was practically glowing. Lil realised with a twinge that this might be what he had always wanted, even more than being safe. He wanted to be seen, just like everyone else.
Minnie said, ‘Can Nedly –’
Lil snatched the pepper pot out of the air. ‘Nedly can do all sorts of incredible things – he’s literally the most amazing person I’ve ever met.’ Nedly’s face blushed brightly, and the tips of Lil’s ears reddened. ‘But if we don’t stop Ghostcatcher, he won’t be doing any of them, so let’s focus on how we do that and we can come back to the tricks later, OK?’
Everyone looked down and murmured, ‘OK.’
‘Good,’ said Lil. ‘So, what we need now is to simulate a haunting, here at the Nite Jar.’ She turned to Starkey. ‘Can we create a sort of electromagnetic charge that EGON would register as a ghost?’
He rolled his eyes up to think about it. ‘That wouldn’t be problematic but we can’t suppress the one that Nedly himself makes, and there would be no guarantee they would follow the decoy.’
‘How about if Nedly starts haunting here, enough to alert EGON and lure Ghostcatcher into the city,’ suggested Minnie. ‘Then, as soon as they are near enough to pick up the reading on their handheld devices, we switch to the decoy.’
‘I could be the decoy!’ offered Starkey.
‘Do you have a car?’ asked Velma.
Starkey face fell. ‘I could get on a bus?’
‘Too risky,’ said Lil. ‘They could board it. How about you take the Zodiac?’
Abe choked on an apple puff. ‘That’s my car you’re talking about.’
‘Right,’ agreed Lil. ‘It might not start when we need it, then we will be in trouble. You could borrow my bike?’
‘I can ride a bike,’ Starkey agreed brightly. ‘Can I fix a cart to it?’
‘Do you have a cart?’
His face fell again.
‘I have a cart,’ said Minnie. ‘An old one. You could use that.’
Abe put his hand on Starkey’s shoulder. ‘You just need to give them the run-around long enough for us to get EGON out of the game.’
‘I won’t let you down,’ Starkey whispered, his eyes glistening with emotion.
‘How about you, Minnie?’ said Lil.
‘I’ll keep watch. There’s a phone box on Bun Hill, just before the roa
d turns towards the asylum. That way I can signal whether they are coming or going, and Irving can contact me directly with the action from town.’
Lil nodded. ‘As soon as they’re clear I’ll go in.’
‘I’ll go in,’ corrected Abe.
‘We can both go in, and find EGON,’ said Lil. ‘See if we can dismantle it somehow.’
Starkey shook his head. ‘You can’t take it apart, I told you. The only way to stop EGON would be with a supercharge of electromagnetic energy, enough to melt its circuits.’ He nodded at the corner. ‘The kind of surge that Nedly could generate.’
Lil and Nedly exchanged worried glances. ‘If Nedly’s going in, then we have to find a way to deactivate the fence. It can sense him; it won’t let him pass without tripping the alarm.’ She pulled a glâcé cherry off a Bakewell slice, threw it up in the air and tried to catch it but it bounced off her chin.
Minnie pointed at the map with a teaspoon. ‘The perimeter fence runs along here. There’s the track from the main road and then this area off to the side is woodland.’ Her spoon scored a line from the gate to the asylum building. ‘The controls are located in an outhouse on the west side of the asylum. It should be a simple on/off switch – easy enough to operate. The gate is locked electrically so once you cut the power it should be a swizz to open it. The real challenge is going to be how you get past the fence in the first place to switch it off.’
Lil chewed on her pencil. ‘Margaret made it under the fence last time. Do you think we could train her up to switch off the alarm?’
At the sound of her name Margaret jumped onto Abe’s lap and sat down with her shoulders back and her chin up. It was her best alert pose: Ready for business, you can count on me.
Abe tucked his chin in to his collar and gave her an apologetic look. ‘She can do that bit all right; she’s got the smarts to find her way in. And Sit! Stay! Lie down! Fetch! None of that is a problem. Find the outhouse on the edge of the west wing of the asylum, open the door, locate the control panel for the gate and perimeter fence and then throw the switch that deactivates the alarm. I just think it’s an instruction too far. Even for a smart dog.’
