In the Company of Ghosts

by Stephen A Hunt

  IN THE COMPANY OF GHOSTS

  An Agatha Witchley Mystery

  Book 1 in the Company of Ghosts series.

  First published in 2011 by Chill Puppy Press

  Copyright © 2011 by Stephen A. Hunt

  Typeset and designed by Chill Puppy Press

  The right of Stephen A. Hunt to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  This book is sold subject to the conditions that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on a subsequent purchaser.

  For further information on Stephen A. Hunt’s novels, see his web site at http://www.StephenHunt.net

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Chapter One – A Delicate Noose.

  Chapter Two – Dancing With Niven.

  Chapter Three – Mrs Witchley’s Other Prison.

  Chapter Four – The Firehall.

  Chapter Five – The Mirror Man.

  Chapter Six – Suspicious Minds.

  If another Gunpowder Plot had been discovered half an hour before the lighting of the match, nobody would have been justified in saving the Parliament until there had been half a score of boards, half a bushel of minutes, several sacks of official memoranda, and a family-vault full of ungrammatical correspondence, on the part of the Circumlocution Office.

  - Little Dorrit. 1856. Charles Dickens.

  CHAPTER ONE – A DELICATE NOOSE

  Gary Doyle was impressed. It was only a toilet, but he had to admit, it was one sodding impressive toilet. If Doyle had succumbed to the persistent stabbing pain in his side he suspected might be bowel cancer and woken up in heaven itself this morning, Saint Peter’s lavatorial facilities at the pearly gates themselves would hardly have seemed less impressive. Taps sculpted like liquid metal. A wall-hung basin with gold inserts, a serpentine heating rail coiled with towels as soft as kitten fur. Everything discreetly stamped with unfamiliar designer names. VitrA? Hansgrohe? Is that a bad cough or the apology a German makes after he steps on your toes?

  Doyle was torn between serious bog envy and investigating the contents of the toilet bowl lurking underneath his posterior. Gary Doyle had become the Nostradamus of irregular bowel movements. He was the Astrologer Royal of his toilet’s contents, examining the celestial mechanics of what swirled in and out of the porcelain throne. Tea leaves to a fucking gypsy. And through the random spatterings of fate, he divined the level of pressure he was suffering on his current case. The state of my illness. The progress of the suspected cancer that no sodding doctor in the heath service seemed able to track down and diagnose. His wife, Emily, would be able to sue one day soon. Assemble all the useless quacks who prodded and probed him, but who could never finding the illness eating away his insides, collect them all on the steps of a courthouse. Yes, she’d be able to take the medical establishment to the cleaners for gross fucking negligence one day soon. He reached out and touched the silky smooth toilet paper hanging from the platinum roller. Doyle was looking forward to emptying half the roll after his bum hole had stopped doing an impression of a Shetland pony emptying its bowels over a paddock. Like wiping my arse with velvet. It was the kind of toilet paper only one of the richest men in the world could afford. I wonder where it comes from? Not Tesco, that was for sure. Not even the John Lewis Partnership. Maybe there was a craftsman somewhere, an artisan lovingly tending a paper-mill capable of the kind of sorcery that produced such softness in paper – wrapping the rolls in wax paper, before hand delivering them to his client list of hedge fund managers and computer tycoons.

  A hand knocked discreetly on the outside of the bathroom door, reminding Doyle that this was still work, potty break or no. This was part of the dark orbit of his career, propelling the knives that slipped and stabbed his guts at inconvenient moments. The intrusion was enough to break Doyle’s reverie and make him realise a yellow puddle of urine was lapping his shoes. Not his piss, not this time. It was the dead man’s urine, seeping under the toilet door. Doyle took the toilet paper, unfurling great sails of it. And why not? Forensics had already been through here, collecting every fingerprint and scrap of DNA they could Hoover up. Strutting around as if they were the stars of this particular soap opera. CSI West London. You had to admire the toilet’s flush. Smooth, powerful, almost noiseless. What feats of plumbing technology had been developed to accomplish something so minimalist yet cleanly efficient? As advanced as a space shuttle’s, that luxurious clearing of the porcelain throat.

  There was another knock, helping Doyle make up his mind. He wouldn’t be using the bidet, not this time. Lord love a bidet, the blessing for everyone with stress-shattered plumbing around the world. Doyle unlocked the bathroom, pushing open the door. He stepped back into the class of office you would expect from its luxurious en-suite toilet.

  The room’s owner, Simon Werks, was slowly twisting around in front of the toilet door, remade into an ornament dangling from his undoubtedly priceless chandelier. His monitor had been left glowing in the office’s half-light. The flat screen on his desk was still displaying some quite dazzling filth on the screen, a high-def bondage film dancing with animated adverts for correlated perversions. The lights were off in the room and wouldn’t come back on. An accidental side effect of the security lockdown the office building’s guards had put in place after they had discovered Simon Werks’ corpse.

  Helen Thorson stood on the other side of the desk, as neat and as immaculate as always, looking up at the twisting corpse as though the body was a piece of modern art she was considering buying. Thorson had the same near-quizzical look on her face that she always wore. Not quite disapproval, not quite surprise, not quite expectation. It was a look that seemed to challenge men. As if to say. I know I’m flawlessly exquisite… what are you going to do for me? What you got? Is that it? You could put Thorson in an interrogation room with a male suspect and she wouldn’t have to say a word. She could just shift her head and let her dark mane of hair fall down to one side of her face and stare at the man until he was possessed by an excruciating need to fill the silence.

  Behind the woman was Spads, his laptop set up on a small folding metal table, cables connected underneath the desk to the dead man’s PC. Spads looked every bit the hacker, the geek’s geek. He was still enjoying his freedom. Up to a couple of weeks ago, he had fully been expecting to be extradited to the USA for his over-familiarity with the Pentagon’s firewalls. He wore a brown woolly hat – indoors, outdoors, hot or cold – which, he clearly believed, made him appear quite the rock star. Except that any musician’s dresser would have advised against growing a scratchy beard so weak a cat could have licked it off. And a rock star would have been able to afford a service wash for the coffee-stained green sweatshirt proudly emblazoned with the slogan, U.S.S. Sulaco. There was a strange ugliness to Spads… an out-of-proportion face where none of his planes or bony features’ symmetry seemed in-balance. It wasn’t the way a normal face should have appeared. Spads might have passed for Steve Buscemi’s brother if you squinted at him.

  ‘Well then,’ Doyle announced to the office. ‘I know what we’re meant to think. Captain Perv Pants here was beating his bishop to Big
Jubblies Dot Com, having a gasper with a dog collar around his neck when the desk he was standing on gives way.’

  Spads spoke without looking up from his laptop. Doyle had to strain to hear him. The hacker’s utterances frequently bordered on whispers. It’s like working with Marlon sodding Brando.

  ‘It was 4chanMovies.com.’ The hacker often interpreted his colleagues’ statements literally; where he was positioned on the autistic spectrum, maybe that shouldn’t have come as a surprise.

  ‘What, you’re a connoisseur? You going to tell me what MILF stands for, I always wanted to know?’

  Spads muttered to himself and kept on working.

  Doyle bent down by the desk. One of the desk’s four legs had snapped away. He was wearing white Nitrile scene-of-crime gloves. He picked up the piece of broken wood and examined it. Not sawn or cut. Snapped, with a ridge of splinters where the leg had come away from the desk. Enough to unbalance the man having a five-finger shuffle on the desk, his neck in a noose attached to the chandelier above.

  Standing up, Doyle tapped the desk’s worn service. ‘This desk is out of place, right? Too small. His secretary next door has a bigger one.’

  ‘It’s a mechanical desk,’ said Thorson. ‘Antique. Drawers rise out of its surface when you activate its gears. This one once belonged to Napoleon Bonaparte.’

  ‘Is it expensive?’ asked Spads.

  ‘Even with its broken leg, you could trade a piece of furniture like this for a Dassault jet.’

  Their tame hacker looked impressed. ‘Cool.’ Spads didn’t have a whole lot of empathy for the rest of humanity. Hanging was a bad death, something to be feared. A deterrent. Not for nothing had it been the state’s preferred method of dispatch for criminals across so many centuries. Less than a month on the job with Doyle, and Spads wasn’t phased in the slightest by Simon Werks’s contorted features, the purple lips and the bulging eyes. Not like Doyle when he had joined the police force. Normal people always remembered their first real corpse. His had been in the Tsim Sha Tsui district on the Kowloon Peninsula, a small bloodstained bundle abandoned in an alleyway, abandoned like a pile of old clothes. The victim stabbed to death over an argument with a local Triad boss. It felt an age since Doyle had experienced anything approaching revulsion at a lost life. That was what this job did to people. When it comes to death, we’re all autistic now.

  Thorson glanced up at Simon Werks’ corpse, still twisting slowly in the noose. Even in death, his face had piercing eyes, as empty as the sky. The dead billionaire’s face put Doyle in mind of the lead actor from 28 Days Later and Sunshine, but he struggled to bring up the performer’s name. At Doyle’s age, memory squirmed and protested as if he was trying to perform an act of vivisection on his mind every time he tried to recall useless details.

  ‘He owned two of these desks,’ said Thorson. ‘Napoleon, I mean, not Werks. A Brazilian industrialist picked up the piece’s twin at auction a few years ago.’

  Thorson knew a lot more about priceless antiques than her pay packet was capable of justifying. Perhaps the rumours about the young woman were true? There hadn’t been anything written down in her personnel file. The scuttlebutt seemed unlikely, and Doyle wasn’t going to ask first. Working for the office was a little like signing up with the French Foreign Legion. When it came to your past, don’t ask, don’t tell was the order of the day.

  ‘So then, it looks like Werks’ desk splintered under his weight, gave way. And then Master Bates here walks the wank to his doom.’ Doyle tutted, his gaze settling on a security camera in the corner. One of three in the palatial office. State of the art digital security: high-resolution varifocal lens, motion detection; automatic day/night switch over; audio channel pick-up and enhanced infrared night vision. Doyle had already watched the camera footage. Simon Werks literally swinging from the chandelier, his bare legs folded under his bottom as he swung back and forth, his feet touching down on the desk’s surface every few seconds. The rich man’s grunting intermingling with the groans and slaps coming from the glowing flatscreen’s built-in speakers. A bizarre pornographic circus act, Werks’ naked feet hitting the desk more and infrequently as he attempted to starve his brain of oxygen as he built up to climax. Then there was the disastrous moment… Simon Werks’ feet touching down, a terrible crunching sound as the desk collapsed. A surprised whoosh of air as the billionaire slipped, his hairy legs falling away without purchase. Werks’ legs flailing at the air, the noose around his neck – available only from a very exclusive boutique in Lugano – suddenly transformed from sex toy to a deadly eighteenth century Tyburn gallows rope as he choked to death.

  ‘All that money,’ said Doyle, indicating the vast, expensive office, ‘was Saucy Simon really into nonsense like this?’

  ‘His secretary’s already admitted buying the noose for him. She paid cash for it two years ago,’ said Thorson.

  ‘With what he was worth, the dirty sod could’ve paid every Oscar Hollywood tart nominated for Best Actress to cover him in chocolate sauce and beat it off his Hairy Harry with million pound bearer bonds. Any corporate money problems that we know about?’

  ‘No, Werks was solid,’ said Thorson. ‘He’s on his third fortune, and he never even spent the first two. Initial money came from the online world: his film aggregation and encryption systems helped pull the movie business back from the brink. His second windfall came from green technologies – backed a substantial chunk of the North African supergrid. Third was aerospace, satellites and near-orbit tourism. Not a penny squandered. He still owns a controlling interest in his company, ControlWerks. Every business still thriving and low geared. First mover advantage.’

  ‘I love it when you do that bullshit business lingo. Saucy Simon owned the firm with his twin brother, though, right?’

  ‘Correct. Curtis Werks is flying back from Durban where he was meant to be opening a desalination plant. The brother’s as eager as the minister to keep this out of the media for the moment. Family-headed business, down to a single engine. The markets will spook; Werks stock is going to be slaughtered when the news of this gets out.’

  Doyle thumped his chest and released a loud burp. ‘Consider that my concern for all the shareholders in the City who’re going to have to trade in their Bugattis for Lamborghinis after their next bonus. Spads, today would be good. I need to see what the building’s security manager saw.’

  ‘Werks’ private camera files went into lockdown after the security manager viewed them,’ said Spads. ‘And they’re sealed properly. Shit, you do know that Werks practically invented TSA-quality post-quantum zero-knowledge proof encryption, don’t you?’

  ‘Spads, the reason why you’re standing here in a state of glorious freedom rather than wearing an orange boiler suit in a five-foot room-share with some serial-killing Texan cracker saving his soap ration just for you, is that Star Trek bollocks sound like real words to you, rather than nyap-nyap-nyap. It means something in the mighty Spads-mind. So let’s be about it, eh?’

  There was a fierce knocking on the other side of the office door, too loud to be the last of the forensics team they had chased out, and Thorson crossed over to unlock it. A tall bear of a man wearing a white, red and green rugby shirt bulldozed his way past Thorson. His receding hairline, black running to silver, looked like the follicly challenged equivalent of Doyle’s irregular bowel movements. He didn’t seem happy to be here. Doyle wondered who had tipped him off. One of the security guards on the lobby downstairs, probably. Most of them were ex-job and liked to stay in with their Yard chums in case they ever needed a favour from the police.

  ‘What the fuck is Werks still doing up there?’ demanded the trespasser. ‘His body should’ve been moved to the secure pathology freezer.’

  Doyle shrugged. ‘In an hour I reckon he will be, officer…’ He glanced quizzically at Thorson who was still holding the case notes folder.

  ‘Chief Inspector Dourdan,’ Thorson said.

  ‘In charge of this investigation!’
The man’s words came out as a bellow.

  ‘This morning you were,’ said Doyle. ‘This afternoon, I am. And it’s not an investigation. It’s a big radioactive puddle of piss that needs clearing up.’ He pulled out a little black leather wallet and passed it over to the officer.

  ‘You’re here for this, for a gasper, for a David-bloody-Carradine, for death by misadventure?’ The policeman opened up Doyle’s wallet, staring at its interior with incredulity. ‘CO7? I’ve never heard of any fucking CO7. And what does it mean under the crown… diplomatic immunity? Is that a joke? What, you cut this out of the back of a packet of cornflakes and glue your photo on top of it? This warrant card doesn’t give me word one. You’re not Met, who’re you with?’

  ‘It stands for the Crap Orifice,’ said Doyle, lifting the wallet back out of the furious policeman’s hand. ‘And this afternoon, we’re crapping all over you. Check your voicemail back at the station. CTC’s removed you from this case and transferred it to our jurisdiction. Goodbye, chief inspector.’

  ‘Special Branch’s yanked me out, is it? What, you spooks, or politicals?’ The policeman stabbed an angry finger at Doyle. ‘You stitch me up and think you’re going to get one inch of cooperation out of the Met?’

  Doyle shaped a telephone out of thumb and finger and stuck his hand by his ear. ‘If I need a car towed, I’ll be sure to speed-dial you, chief inspector. Enjoy the match at Twickenham.’

  ‘Wanker!’

  ‘That’s just speaking ill of the dead.’

  Thorson’s eyes wrinkled in despair as Dourdan slammed the door behind him. She sighed and didn’t bother to disguise her irritation with Doyle. ‘Next time, why don’t we place Spads in charge of police liaison?’

  ‘Spads would only rub the chief inspector up the wrong way. This is as fun as it gets. How about it, Spads… how much potential rammage is the Orifice up for with this one?’

  ‘I’m past the encryption,’ said the hacker. ‘Get over here quick. The file’s going to lock under a fresh key as soon as it’s played a second time.’