A Spookies Compendium

by David Robinson

  Irritation flushed her. She looked around. There was nothing on the roof that would be of any assistance.

  If Kevin had been fully fit, he would have had the tools with him, but with a badly bruised ankle, he would never have made it up those stairs. She was on her own.

  Returning to the first floor, she entered the classroom Fishwick had mentioned and found the cupboard he had spoken of. Secured with a small padlock, the key was easier to find than for other doors. She opened it and looked inside. There was no sign of a wrench, but there was a large, furled sheet of yellow cloth and even before she unrolled it, she knew what it was. Kevin had said that there were no flags flying in his vision other than the flag of Loki. She spread it on the floor and stared down on the evil grinning face again.

  A shadow fell over the flag. She turned quickly to find not only Trent, but also Alec Minton, behind her.

  “My dear Ms Rand,” said the headmaster, “you must think we’re complete fools. Had you or the police left anything in the library, I would have found it.”

  *****

  “So you’re not going to tell me what it’s all about?” Sceptre asked.

  Minton laughed and Trent allowed himself a faint smile.

  “It’s all about an explosion, Ms Rand,” Trent said, “And it’s one you’ll be able to watch. From close range, I’m afraid. About three or four feet, in fact. Beyond that, I don’t think there’s anything else you need to know. In the meantime, I suggest you relax. Perhaps your butler may be able to help.” Now Trent laughed. “If he can’t, you’ll be meeting him before the day is out.”

  Her hands and feet bound, dropped onto the settee in the study at the headmaster’s lodge, Sceptre maintained an air of calm aplomb, and silently thanked the spirits for the birthright that had instilled such authority in her.

  Hovering above the headmaster’s study, Fishwick asked, “Do you need me to untie you, Madam?”

  “Not at the moment, thank you, Fishwick,” she replied, “Mr Trent and this other individual clearly don’t believe that you even exist, and I don’t think we should deny them a good laugh yet. I’ll have the last laugh anyway.”

  Both Trent and Minton guffawed at her one-way conversation. Sceptre delivered a sickly sweet smile. “The wonderful thing about having a ghost for a butler is that so few people believe,” she said. “It does me no end of good when they realise I’m telling the truth. So, Mr Trent, you are the High Master of the Venerable Disciples of Loki …”

  “Dear me, no,” Trent interrupted. He looked to Minton. “I think, Alec, as the Master has said all along, there has been less to worry about than we imagined.”

  Sceptre, her mind alive with tumbling thoughts on the possible identity of the High Master, scowled at Trent. “You are assuming the police and particularly my partners, to be total fools, and they’re not. For example, do you know that they found a detonator and traces of an explosive in Ginger Green’s car, and that they’re actively seeking you, Mr Minton?”

  Minton shrugged. “By tonight they can look all they want. They’ll know why we needed the explosives because the big bang will have happened, but they won’t know why we’re doing it and I’ll be in another country with another identity.”

  “And, of course, they don’t know about me,” Trent gloated, “they don’t know the identity of the High Master, and you, Ms Rand, will be with your faithful retainer so you won’t be able to tell them.”

  “You’re forgetting Peter Brennan,” Sceptre said. “He’s an extraordinary man, you know. He’s as tough and violent as you, Mr Minton, when he needs to be, and much smarter than a man of you mediocrity would credit, Mr Trent.”

  Trent smiled, his eyes squinting with glee. “It is my very mediocrity, Ms Rand, coupled, naturally, to my exalted position as headmaster of the Ashdalean, which has kept the law away from me for the last two decades. Now, Ms Rand, be a good girl and stay where you are.” He laughed at her bound ankles. “The High Master will be here this afternoon and if he is so minded, he will tell you everything. If not, you’ll be able to watch what happens from your spirit place, won’t you?”

  *****

  Pete sat in the front row of the West Stand with Andrea alongside him, watching while bomb squad officers and their dogs patrolled the entire stadium. All the pillars supporting the upper galleries had been inspected top and bottom, with particular emphasis on the top joints where they were anchored to the upper tiers.

  “Looks like old padlock is doing more listening than talking for a change,” Pete commented.

  Andrea followed his gaze to the centre of the sports field, where a construction team were erecting the stage upon which the Wicked Witches would perform in a few hours, Locke stood with the superintendent in charge of the bomb squad. The chief inspector had his hands clasped in front of him, and was doing a lot of nodding, while the superintendent gesticulated now and then, or pointed what looked like an accusing finger at Locke.

  At one point, Locke unclasped his hands, and leaned forward slightly, obviously fighting back, but the superintendent cut in on him, and Locke half turned away. Even from this distance, Pete could make out the chief inspector’s ruddy complexion.

  “He’ll give himself a heart attack one of these days,” Andrea commented. “Worse than that,” she continued as the superintendent wandered off and Locke turned to stride towards them, “he’ll give me one.”

  “Pompous pillock,” grumbled Locke, joining them. “Moaning about the amount of manpower needed to look for a bomb we don’t even know exists.” He rounded on Andrea. “And I blame you. I’ve told you before about listening to Brennan, haven’t I?”

  “It was my idea, sir, not Pete’s,” Andrea retorted, “and no matter what he says,” she indicated the uniformed superintendent, “we still have twenty-five pounds of TNT, plus detonators, missing.”

  “With no explanation as to why it should be planted here,” Locke argued.

  “Minton is missing presumed guilty, Locke,” Pete interjected. “As Henderson’s chief cook, bottlewasher and thug, Minton would have known what the score is here with these pillars.”

  “We don’t even know that he nicked it,” Locke pointed out.

  “Then where is he?” Pete demanded. “Use your nut, man. Ginger Green was like Danny Corcoran. Neither of them had the brains to do anything on their own. Both acted on orders, and Ginger worked for Minton. If Ginger had that stuff in his car, then Minton told him to put it there. My guess is Minton went to ground last night when he found out that Ginger was dead, because he knew the balloon would go up when you found the detonator.” Pete stood up. “Find Minton and you’ll find your TNT. Andrea, any danger of a lift home?”

  “She has other work to do, Brennan,” Locke snapped. “Get a cab.”

  Andrea gave him a wan smile of apology.

  *****

  Kevin blanched. “TNT? That’s stuff’s dynamite.”

  “Considerably more dangerous than dynamite, Kev,” Pete said.

  “And Alec Minton is missing and Ginger Green is dead,” Kevin went on as if Pete had not spoken. “I know I might be a bit slow on the uptake sometimes, but what does it all mean?”

  “I don’t know,” his best pal admitted. “I was hoping maybe Sceptre had some answers. Where did you say she was going?”

  “The Ashdalean,” Kevin replied. “Said she had something she wanted to check on.” He read his watch. “It’s nearly five now and I’m going out soon.”

  “Where?”

  “Ashdale Arena, man. Haven’t you been listening to me?” Kevin tutted. “I’ve been telling you all week, the Wicked Witches are putting on the grand opening concert, all for charity and I’ve got a ticket.”

  Pete picked up his mobile and dialled Sceptre’s mobile for the fifth time, and for the fifth time, he got no answer. “Still switched off. Tell you what, why don’t I whiz you down to the arena and from there, if I can’t get her, I’ll cut along to the Ashdalean. Then I can pick you up when the show’s o
ver.”

  Kevin struggled to his feet, careful to keep his weight off his injured ankle. “Tickety-chuffing-boo.”

  *****

  “It’s time to deal with everything?” said the High Master.

  “She assures us Brennan knows everything, Master.” Despite his normal confidence, Trent was careful to maintain the correct tone of respect for the High Master. “Notwithstanding our ambitions, I still have a school to run, and I do the school’s reputation no favours with all that has happened here. The governors are already asking questions.”

  “Now we’re dwelling in never-never land,” the High Master said. “When this is over, you can forget the school and the governors. You’ll be a rich man. This has been badly handled, particularly by Danny, Ginger and especially Anders. Still, what’s done is done. There’s no point worrying about it. Alec, you are the only one who can be directly linked to tonight’s event. As we agreed, you’ll have to disappear. You have the passport arranged?”

  “It’s waiting for me, Master,” Minton reported. “I’m on the eight o’clock flight to Schiphol, Amsterdam, and I make a ten o’clock connection from there to Moscow.”

  “Our friends in Russia are waiting for you,” said the High Master. “If the supply chain is to be properly established, it’s up to you to ensure that they are convinced we can deliver. I’m relying on you, Alec.”

  “You can count on me, Master.”

  The High Master’s soulless eyes bored into him. “I’d better be able to.” He clapped his huge hands together. “Right. Let’s deal with her ladyship.”

  Trent blanched. “You’re going to kill her here? Now?”

  “Getting a conscience, Norman?” sneered the High Master. “No, I am not going to deal with her here. We cannot afford to have any further links between the VDL and this school. We will carry on according to plan. She will be tied and bound close to the explosive. When it goes up, it will blow her into so many pieces that it’ll take them months to work out she was a woman, never mind figure out her name.”

  *****

  Bored almost to the point of nodding off, Sceptre brought her senses to full awareness as voices approached along the hall. She had heard someone arrive half an hour previously but they had passed the study in near silence and gone into the rear kitchen. Now they were coming back. The door opened, Trent and Minton stepped in followed by a third man.

  As tall as the other two, much better built, he wore a dark brown robe with a yellow slash along one side. The High Master, as described by Kevin. His hands jutted from the sleeves of his gown, clasped lightly in front of him, their dark brown skin gleaming in the overhead light. Even before he threw back his hood, she knew who he was.

  “Sonny Briscoe,” she said. “So many things begin to make sense. Particularly the link between The Ashdalean and the Ashdale Arena.”

  “Very clever, Ms Rand, but not clever enough. You still don’t know what’s happening, do you?”

  “Oh I think I can guess.” Even to herself, Sceptre sounded as arrogant as Pete. “You’re about to extract revenge on the police for the time you spent in prison, and you’re going to do it by planting a bomb at the Ashdale Arena. Regardless of the number of people it kills, it will demonstrate how ineffective the police are. That’s why you sent for Nordqvist, wasn’t it? A Scandinavian terrorist with experience of explosives.”

  Briscoe laughed. A deep and booming laugh rich in genuine mirth. When he subsided, he said to his disciples, “You see. I told you all along there was nothing to worry about, didn’t I?”

  They seated themselves around her, Trent and Minton either side, Briscoe drawing up a chair to face her.

  Briscoe checked an ostentatious gold watch. “In about two hours, Ms Rand, the Wicked Witches will kick off a show in aid of charity. There will be one hundred thousand people in the arena. About twenty minutes into the show, the stage will be obliterated by a huge explosion. At the same time, another explosion will bring down part of the North stand roof on the unsuspecting crowd below. There will be deaths and many injuries. You won’t see any of this. In fact, you’ll be so close to the bomb, you won’t even know about it. One moment you will be under the stage listening to that god awful racket the girls pour out, the next you’ll be history.

  “You’re going to kill the Wicked Witches?” Sceptre battled to subdue her anger in favour of her curiosity. “They’re your income.”

  “Income, pah!” Sceptre expected Briscoe to spit at the carpet, but he did not. “I work seven days a week for those bitches and I earn peanuts. And do you know what ungrateful cows they are? All I get are threats, threats and more threats. I toe the line or they cut off my contract. They treat me like dog shit.” Briscoe allowed himself a moment to calm down. “Nordqvist, as you so rightly pointed out, was to plant the charges, but that’s not the reason he came to this country. He came to find his real daddy.”

  Trent smiled. “Michael Andersen,” he said. “A wild night in a Danish city three decades ago.”

  “When we told him what had a happened to his father, how he had been moved from the home where he was happy just so the town could build an arena on lad his father considered sacred, Gus was mad as hell. Willing to do whatever we wanted. So I hired him as a roadie.”

  “Because if anyone were going to plant a bomb,” Sceptre said, “it wouldn’t be the roadie.”

  “Now you’re getting the picture,” said the High Master.

  The logic circuits clicked into place in Sceptre’s brain. “But Nordqvist screwed the job up, didn’t he? He fell in love with Nag Lane?”

  Briscoe nodded. “Correct. I tried to persuade him, but he wouldn’t listen. He wanted out and it was too late to get out. He should have orchestrated tonight’s little explosion but when he had that bitch saddled, it meant we had to change our plans.”

  “So you killed him and then looked for alternatives.” Sceptre glanced at Minton. “And you didn’t have to look far because as an ex-con, you knew Minton, and knew that he, too, had an explosives licence.”

  Minton grinned. “She catches on real quick, Master.”

  “Yes, I do.” She glowered. “It’s what comes of being a member of the aristocracy. As I’m sure Mr Trent will confirm, we’re better educated than the hoi polloi.”

  “Ooh. That was a bit below the belt.”

  Even Trent laughed at Briscoe’s comment.

  Sceptre concentrated on the headmaster. “All this is simply revenge because the hospice in which Michael Andersen died was pulled down for the arena.”

  Her conclusion, which seemed quite logical to her, had them in fits of laughter once more.

  “My dear young woman,” laughed Trent, “you don’t seriously imagine we would go to all this trouble to avenge a rambling old fool like Andersen, do you?”

  “I just said it seemed odd, didn’t I?”

  The High Master gestured. “We have a little time. Norman will enlighten you.”

  Trent looked pleased to be the centre of attention. “I told you before that I visited Norman regularly at the Long Bank hospice. Everyone, even the police, assumed I did so out of friendship. In fact, I was safeguarding my pension, Ms Rand.”

  “Your pension?”

  “Some years earlier,” Trent told her, “the Master, in his former guise as a reformed offender, visited the school to talk about his life of crime and why it felt so good to have …what’s the phrase? … gone straight. During that visit, Sonny Briscoe met both me and Michael Andersen. Michael was, as I have told you, deteriorating, rambling quite badly, and I was, as ever, concerned about money. The school was having a tough time and it looked as I may be out of a job, and out of a pension. That’s when Mr Briscoe put his little proposition to me.”

  “In return for certain goods of Eastern European origin,” said Briscoe, “I could cut the headmaster in for a sizeable sum. A damn sight more than he earned running the school. And we had the perfect patsy. Poor old Andersen.”

  “Cocaine.” Sceptre
spat the word out. “Pete mentioned leopards and spots. You were never reformed.”

  Briscoe laughed. “Thanks largely to society’s do-gooders like you.”

  “The entire thing was very simple,” said Trent. “We played on Michael’s Venerable Disciples of Loki ramblings. We formed our sect around him as the High Master, on the understanding that Mr Briscoe would take over when Michael died. It worked wonderfully. We took offerings to Michael on a monthly basis and he kept them away from the prying eyes of nurses at Long Bank.”

  “Then someone pulled the god damned hospice down and moved him to Watersend.” Briscoe’s features had darkened. “We weren’t even warned they were moving him,” he grumbled. His normally placid features twisted with rage. “When they moved him out there, he was storing about three pounds, street value sixty grand, and we couldn’t bloody find it. Not only that, but he went and died three weeks later without ever telling us where it was.”

  “Things got worse,” Trent took up the narrative. “This was a huge amount of merchandise to lose and our Eastern European connection cut off the supply. We couldn’t be trusted.”

  “This is absurd,” said Sceptre. “How could anyone misplace such a large amount?”

  “I’m the Wicked Witches manager, remember,” Briscoe said. “I’m not without influence. I made discreet inquiries. As far as anyone was concerned, distant family of Andersen had been traced. They were anxious to get their hands on an old, leather bound volume that had belonged to him. Couldn’t be mistaken. It was very heavy. Valuable antique. No one had seen it. I watched and waited for the coke to hit the street, but it never did.”

  “You’re so sure?”

  “That amount of high grade coke would make ripples,” Briscoe assured her. “It never turned up.”

  “I checked with the demolition crew,” said Minton. “No go. They hadn’t found it either, but I did learn something from them. Some of the gear in the hospice had been handed over to Sheila Lane. The Wicked Witches’ mother. She was a carer at the hospice.”