Just a Touch Dead

by Jordaina Sydney Robinson

  “Well?” He drummed each finger on his right hand on the white Formica tabletop.

  “Well what?” I tore my eyes away from the disaster that was my reflection. There was no salvaging the mascara.

  “You just found him there?” He wore a bland expression that matched his tone and probably his personality.

  “Yes.” I sighed. I was sure I’d told him this at least a trillion times already. “I just found him there.”

  “You just found him?”

  “Are you a parrot or a detective? Yes, I just found him.”

  “Uh-huh.” He nodded and flipped through a few more loose sheets. The minutes stretched out as he read something in silence. Finally he closed the file and stared at me. He drummed his right hand on the table again. That was going to get annoying.

  “Okay. You’re right. You got me.” I held up my hands in surrender, far too tired for a battle-of-wills staring match. “I killed him and stuffed his body in my locker, hoping to deflect suspicion from myself in an extremely clever way.”

  “I suppose you think that’s funny.”

  I leaned towards him. “No, I think it’s frustrating. It doesn’t matter how many different ways you ask me, my answer will still be ‘I found him there’. Do you know why?”

  “Why?”

  I threw my hands up in frustration. “Because I found him there!”

  “Uh-huh.” He stared at me for another long moment then returned to flicking through the folder, unruffled by my outburst. He spoke without lifting his eyes. “I’ve been unable to verify your alibi.”

  “Somehow I’m not surprised by that.” I sighed again, thinking that said more about his detecting skills than my guilt.

  “No one at Arrivals can vouch for your constant presence.” No expression, no intonation in his voice, no habitual tie straightening. Only that damn finger drumming.

  “Right. So. You think what?” I leaned back in my chair, eyebrows raised. “That I died, somehow zipped over from Arrivals to wherever this guy was, killed him, dragged him to the ladies’ locker room, stuffed him into a locker I didn’t know I was going to be assigned, and then rode a cloud back to Arrivals to give myself an alibi?”

  “So, you’d never met him before today?”

  “I only died today. When could I possibly have met him?”

  “You died three days ago.”

  Had I spent three days in that nightmare of afterlife airport? “Well, y’know what? I’ve not been to bed since I died, so it’s still to-goddamn-day to me.”

  Drum, drum, drum of his fingers on the table. “That doesn’t answer my question, Miss Sway.”

  I watched the fingers on his right hand still. My left eye twitched as I waited for the next round and something occurred to me. “Is this Hell?”

  “So, you’d never met him before today?” Johnson repeated, calm and unperturbed.

  I folded my arms on the table, rested my head on them and tried to go back to sleep. Okay, so I might have had a slightly bigger problem with authority than I initially made out.

  “Are you refusing to cooperate?”

  My head shot back up. “Are you kidding me right now? What is still yesterday morning to me, I got fired, found my fiancé cheating on me and then got hit by a bus, which, since it killed me, you think would be the end of it. But noooooo. After dying, I spent hours riding the Bus of Death with Charon, who, by the way, does not observe any traffic laws. And which I personally thought was an extremely insensitive mode of transport in my particular circumstances. Then I spent the next three days, according to you, in Afterlife Arrivals, which is worse than any airport I have ever experienced. And I’ve been through Charles De Gaulle.

  “Then I was sent to start my new job immediately, and FYI working in your afterlife sucks, only to find a dead dead guy in my locker, bleeding over my uniform, which you guys” – I jabbed a finger at not-Colombo as if he were personally responsible – “will probably charge me for. So, believe me when I tell you I have cooperated to the fullest extent of my current capacity.”

  Detective Johnson considered me for a long moment, drumming his damn fingers on the table. If it carried on, I was going to break them. I just was. I wouldn’t be able to help myself.

  “Constable?” Johnson didn’t raise his voice, but an older gentleman with a kind face and a twinkle in his eyes sidestepped through the door.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Can you accompany Miss Sway to her GA meeting please?” Johnson watched me while speaking to the constable. I don’t know what he hoped to see on my face, maybe a flash of guilty victory. The only thing he got was confusion. Pretty much the same look I’d worn since I died.

  “Yes, sir.” The constable, dressed in the same style of black suit as Johnson, stepped further into the room and held open the door. “Miss Sway?”

  “You’re free to go,” Johnson said.

  I glanced from him to the constable and back, almost fearing a trick. Saying nothing, I stood, straightened my suit jacket and then headed to the door with the confident stride of an innocent woman.

  “For now,” Johnson added as I stepped out of the interrogation room and tripped over my own foot. I winced. Way to look guilty.

  Outside of the interrogation room, the large office was open plan. It was a hive of activity with the human worker bees clad in black suits and white shirts. The only difference was the ties. Some people wore navy while the majority wore pastel blue like my constable. I even clocked a couple of lilac like Johnson. I guessed they used them to define rank instead of stripes on the shoulder.

  I scanned along the neat potato waffle arrangement of desks as we walked through the office. No desk clutter anywhere. No pictures. No posters. No toys.

  “Is this the homicide division?” I’d never been inside a real life police station, but I imagined they had a lot less personnel devoted to murders. A bigger homicide department meant a higher murder rate, didn't it? How ironic; I was more likely to be murdered after I died.

  The constable nodded. “Yes, but this department looks after a much wider catchment than a normal police department.”

  I followed him along one of the narrow aisles, turning in a circle to get the full effect of the room. “How much larger?”

  His lips pulled into a small smile and pride shone through his voice. “About the size of Europe.”

  “Huh.” I made eye contact with at least four navy ties and one pastel blue; all stared at me as if I were something they’d scrapped off their shoe. Maybe Johnson had stamped “criminal” on my forehead while I slept.

  “You look like you’re chewing a wasp.” The constable smiled and pointed a thick finger at my face. “Spit it out.”

  “Oh.” I pushed a loose strand of hair back in my chignon and readjusted the bobby pin. “I thought this department was huge but, if it's looking after a Europe-sized amount of people, it’s actually quite small.” Like, maybe, ineffectually small.

  “You don’t grow old here. You don’t die unless it’s by another ghost’s hand, accidental or not. We, with the occasional assistance of the GBs, have a one hundred per cent case closure rate.” He met my eyes. “All murders are solved. Some just take longer than others.”

  “What are GBs? And what’s a typical case closure time? And roughly how many murders are we talking per year? Wait, do we have prisons here? We must do. Are the laws the same? We have police, so there must be a justice system, right? Is the crime rate worse in certain areas? Is there a crime rate at all? There must be. There must be other crimes than murder?”

  The constable laughed softly and held up his hands against the barrage of questions. “Whoa, there.”

  “Sorry, I can get a bit …” I swept my fringe out of my eyes, feeling a blush warm my cheeks. At least that would help my complexion. “No one’s really told me anything.”

  “I was the same when I first got here. I took a breath between questions, though.” He leaned in and lowered his voice. “The GBs, the Ghosting Busters
, are our specialised police force, like the FBI or Interpol. They deal with a variety of crimes, from murder to unauthorised hauntings. The rest you don’t really need to know.”

  I disagreed resoundingly with that last comment, but his reluctance to talk about it prevented me from asking. Did he mean the rest of things they dealt with or the answers to my other questions?

  We headed out of the double doors at the end of the office into a square room twice the size of the interrogation room with pale green walls, a white ceiling and dimmed lighting. The word “Arrivals" was painted in black capital letters on the right hand wall. On the dark green floor beneath it ran two rows of eight white circles, each circle just over a foot in diameter. The left side of the room was set up the same except that wall had "Departures" painted on it.

  A man in his early twenties with short blond hair and a navy tie appeared on one of the circles to the right.

  “Evening, Herb,” he said with a nod to the constable as he passed us.

  “I was hoping we could take a taxi. Or maybe walk?” I said, staring at the circle the man had appeared on. I’d done this transporting thing twice, once from Afterlife Arrivals and once to here. It had not gone well either time.

  “I’ll be gentle,” the constable promised, moving to a circle on the departures side and offering me his hand.

  Reluctantly, I moved towards him. “Where are we going?”

  “Your GA meeting.”

  “Oh, er, look, Officer. I’m not a gambler, so I’m good to go straight home.” Wherever that was.

  They had a police station so surely they had living quarters. A vision of a long ago school trip where all the girls slept in a large dormitory with only two showers reared its incredibly unwelcome head. I shivered. Never again. Things might be different now I was dead, but I still had standards.

  “Call me Herb. And your GA meeting is your Ghostly Acclimatisation meeting.” Taking my hand, he positioned me close to the little white circle he was standing on. “Nothing to do with gambling.”

  “Oh.” Right. Of course. Something else that wasn’t in the induction.

  His eyes twinkled at me. “It’ll be good for you. I know you have a lot of questions.” He clasped both my hands in his. “Ready?”

  “Not really.”

  Pressure bore down on me from all sides. When I didn’t think I could take anymore, the world blurred and tossed me around like a rag doll in a tumble dryer. My stomach was seriously considering an evacuation plan when the turbulence stopped as abruptly as it had started and I landed hard on my bottom.

  “Phew, that was a tough one. I’m sorry, I forgot it was rush hour.” Herb leaned over and looked into my spinning pupils. “Are you okay?”

  I would have answered but the concept of trying to think of several words and then place them in any coherent order was temporarily beyond me. At least I hadn’t thrown up that time. Silver lining.

  Herb sat down next to me on the grass. The summer sun was still warm, and for a moment I could close my eyes and pretend I was lazing in Regent’s Park with Michael, the ex-fiancé. Thoughts of that cheating scumbag brought me out of that daydream quick smart. To distract myself from the last indelicate image I had of him, I looked around and was surprised to recognise the view below. It’d been nearly ten years since I’d been home, but the harbour, the curve of the beach and the row on row of townhouses inching back from the sea were exactly as I remembered.

  I knew without looking that the hill fort would be directly behind me, and off to the left would be the brick outlined ruins of the rest of the castle. I knew on both sides and to my back that the only view would be of the sea, and if I looked directly down from our grassy knoll I’d have a clear view of the tree-lined steep hill that led up to the fort. I also knew I’d be able to pick out the tree I’d carved my name into many moons ago, even from this distance.

  I inhaled a deep breath and felt the salty air tickle my throat. “We’re in Scarborough.”

  Herb smiled and nodded. “My wife and I used to holiday here every summer.”

  There was such a wistfulness to his voice I almost asked when she had passed away before I realised he was the one who’d died. This was going to take some getting used to.

  “I grew up here.” The boats that dotted the horizon, the sea salt on the breeze, the crying seagulls, the specks on the beach that I knew were donkeys, all comfortingly familiar.

  “Then you should feel right at home.” Herb handed me a silver hip flask and a hankie. “Before you go on in.”

  “Oh, that’s very kind.” I smiled, grateful for the offer of the alcohol if slightly confused about the hankie. “But I’m more of a martini type of girl. Whisky goes straight to my head.”

  Herb gestured to my face. “It’s the closest thing I’ve got to a mirror. Thought you might want to tidy yourself up a bit. Can’t let this be their first impression of you.”

  Remembering the horror staring back at me from the interrogation room mirror, I accepted the flask. Despite my distorted reflection I could still make out the clumps of hair that had worked their way out of the neat chignon, the smudged black eyes, and I’d managed to get a streak of lip gloss on my chin.

  “How do I look?” I turned to Herb after frantically smoothing my hair over and wiping away as much of the mascara from under my eyes as possible.

  “Beautiful.” He smiled and returned the hip flask to his inside jacket pocket before pulling me to my feet. “Now in you go before they class you as late. Mr Salier will be waiting out here to collect you when the meeting’s over.”

  “Who’s Mr Salier?” I very much felt like I was being passed from pillar to post, and neither really wanted me.

  “He’ll be your … guardian, so you just wait for him, you hear?” He raised his grey eyebrows in warning.

  I pouted. I couldn’t help it. It was like getting told off by my grandpa. “I’m not going to go wandering off into trouble.”

  Herb smiled widely and shook his head. “Ah, Miss Sway. You strike me as the type of child that’s never out of trouble.”

  Are you hooked? Find Beyond Dead on the links below and continue reading!

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