by Sophie Green
Abe thumped himself on the chest a couple of times to knock the stuff down. It was so strong it made him sweat. He wiped his face on the back of his hand and realised he was still covered in shaving foam. Frowning, he left the room to use the sink in the small bathroom.
‘You should really get the radiator fixed,’ Lil yelled over the groaning of pipes as he ran the taps.
‘Just as soon as I get a piece of serious work from a paying client I will,’ he yelled back. ‘Anyway, I don’t feel the cold.’ Lil heard the hot-water bottle flopping to the floor.
Nedly was smiling excitedly at Margaret. ‘Lil, check it out – Margaret is sort of smiling at me. What do you say, girl? Is that a smile for your old pal Nedly?’
Lil looked at Margaret’s wide, staring eyes and the clump of hair that stood up on her haunches. Her black lips curled back, revealing neat white teeth.
‘Sure,’ said Lil.
‘I think I’m growing on her,’ said Nedly, making out like he was ruffling her fur but from a couple of metres away. ‘She was just nervous, that’s all.’ He took a step towards her.
Margaret growled.
‘Come on, Margaret,’ Lil whispered under her breath. ‘Give him a break.’
‘I give her the creeps, I know. It’s OK.’ He looked like he was trying to shrug off a heavy coat. ‘It’s just – I always wanted a dog.’ He stared at her sadly for a moment. ‘And Margaret’s a great dog.’ A spark came to his eye. ‘Hey, I’m going to give it a go right now. Lil, pass me that ball.’
‘This one?’ Lil picked up Abe’s ‘thinker’, a dirty tennis ball the colour of mould, which he used to throw against a wall while he was mulling things over. She carefully held it out for Nedly to take. He cradled it in his hands like an overripe peach, his eyes on it the whole time. ‘Wait a minute; is this what you’ve been practising …?’
‘Shhhh,’ said Nedly. ‘I have to concentrate.’
Abe emerged from the bathroom, propped himself against the door frame and watched the ball move through the air.
‘Nice trick,’ he said. ‘You know, if you could carry a ball with you all the time, then I’d know where you are.’
Nedly gasped. ‘It takes quite a lot of effort to carry a ball; I don’t think I could do it for more than a few seconds.’
Lil reported back. ‘No dice. Too much effort,’ and then to Nedly she said, ‘Don’t tell me this is what you’ve been working on, all this time?’ She could barely hide her disappointment. ‘Flickering the lights, that weird hand thing and this?’
‘Ha!’ Nedly laughed and lost concentration, nearly dropping the ball. ‘This is just the beginning. Just a second!’ He took a deep breath, cried out, ‘Here, Margaret!’ and then let go. The ball bounced half-heartedly across the floor. Margaret didn’t move.
Nedly took a step forward to retrieve it. Margaret’s eyes widened, the whites showing, and she let out a low growl. Nedly took a step back. ‘Lil! Pass me the ball again. I’m going to have another try; she wasn’t ready.’
Lil gave Abe a look that held a deep and heavy sigh in it. ‘I can’t believe this is the other thing, Nedly.’ As she retrieved the ball Margaret sprang up onto her back legs, tail wagging.
Lil threw the ball back at Nedly. It was too fast for him to catch but Margaret darted after it, snatched it from the ground when it bounced and walked off to bury it in her bed.
Nedly watched it vanish under the layers of blanket. ‘Fetch,’ he said weakly.
Lil took herself off to the bathroom before she said something she regretted. She stood, hands clutching the sink, looking into the cracked mirror. It was as though Nedly didn’t want to learn anything useful. She ran the water until it faded from tea-coloured to beige and then splashed some on her face, patting it dry on the grey rag that passed as a towel.
She opened the door just in time to hear Abe saying, ‘Margaret will come round, kid. Don’t give up on her.’ He was facing the wrong way again, but he still got a grateful smile out of Nedly.
Lil cleared her throat. ‘So, are we leaving?’
Abe picked his hat off the stand, put it on and tugged the front brim down.
‘I don’t want to go to the morgue.’ Nedly squirmed. ‘It’s full of dead people.’
Lil ignored him; she was too busy trying to stay hot on Abe’s heels. So much so that when Abe opened the door she bowled into him.
Someone was standing right behind it.
Chapter 9
There’s No Such Thing as Ghosts
‘Absolom Mandrel?’
It was the man in the green poncho. Close up, Lil could see that the eyes behind the orange aviator specs were lively, his poncho was military issue and over one shoulder was slung a camo-print knapsack. He looked like he was ready for anything, except maybe the thing he was looking for.
Abe flicked up the brim of his hat. ‘Who’s asking?’
‘My name is Irving Starkey and I am a –’
Abe cut across him, ‘Sorry, pal. I was just on my way out. Care to make an appointment?’
Nedly ran to the appointment book and tried flicking the page over. Lil darted over to stop him and slammed the book shut.
‘No appointment necessary.’ She grinned brightly at him. ‘We can spare a couple of minutes.’
If Starkey saw anything strange he didn’t mention it, but he took the opportunity to take a step into the office and pulled off his hood, revealing a head that looked like it had been oiled and polished. The hood elastic had left a red ridge across his forehead, like his skull had been opened and then zipped shut again. ‘I have one thing to ask you. It will only take a minute.’
He began a circuit around the room, pacing it out like one of those country-house detectives about to spill the juice on the murderer. He paused at Margaret and looked down at her with an awkward smile. Margaret returned the look without the smile.
‘Who’s this?
‘That’s my dog, Margaret.’
‘Hmmm,’ said Starkey. ‘She’s small for a dog.’
Abe sidled up, frowning. ‘She’s a small dog.’
‘Yes, exactly,’ he agreed enigmatically.
‘She doesn’t eat much and she’s an expert at tailing someone without being seen. She can get into places too small for me and retrieve things, and she knows how to keep her mouth shut.’
‘Curious name for a dog.’
‘It was my mother’s name,’ Abe replied.
‘Her tag says “Muffin”, said Starkey, reading it.
Abe humphed. ‘Well, I call her Margaret, and it’s stuck now. She seems to like it anyway,’ he added defensively. ‘You didn’t come here to talk about my dog, did you?’
‘No.’ Starkey turned his lively eyes on them. ‘I came here to tell you that my name is Irving Starkey –’ he paused dramatically – ‘and I am a ghost hunter!’
Starkey looked at Abe, Abe looked at Lil, and Lil looked at Nedly, who backed into the corner, to the dark space behind the coat rack. The tension in the room was so thick you would have needed a pickaxe to break it up. Margaret didn’t like it one bit and growled.
Lil ordered her eyes away from the coat rack and they found Abe’s instead but in a split second his face became as still as an Easter Island statue. Lil tried to mimic it. She knew what the blank look meant; it was the equivalent of shutters being pulled down, nothing to be given away.
And so nobody moved.
Eventually, after seconds had passed and he’d worked out how to play it, Abe raised his eyebrows and said, ‘You hunt ghosts?’
‘I do.’ Starkey pulled himself up to his full height, which was only slightly taller than Lil.
‘You get enough work to make a living?’ Abe asked conversationally.
‘Actually, I’m retired. I used to be in insurance. But that’s enough about me. I came here to tell you what I suspect you already know.’ He began the pacing again. It was a small room and he had already done two circuits. Lil was starting to feel dizzy watching him and took up a perch on the c
orner of Abe’s desk.
Starkey paused at the coat rack. ‘There is a strange atmosphere in this room.’ He let his eyes wander as though he was searching the air for invisible clues.
With a noise that only Lil could hear, like the whine as the last bit of air leaks out of a balloon, Nedly sank back through the wall. Lil could just make out the tip of his nose hovering there.
‘Hmmm.’ Starkey peeled one of Abe’s damp socks off the broken radiator. ‘The culprit, I think.’ He gave Abe a discomforting look. ‘I’ve heard stories, Detective Mandrel, on the streets. Stories of fear. Everyone is afraid but no one knows why.’
Lil flicked a glance at Nedly’s nose. ‘What stories?’
‘Rumours, and more than rumours.’ He took hold of the back of Abe’s office chair as though he was going to give it a shoulder rub, and squeezed. ‘People are vanishing under mysterious circumstances, and –’ The chair shot away from him. Starkey fell to his knees behind the desk.
Lil rushed over. ‘Are you OK?’
Starkey tried to brush it off but the pained expression on his face and the crack of his joints betrayed him.
He attempted to stand, treading on the hem of his poncho, which yanked him back to the floor face down. He clambered to his feet again, readjusted his glasses, hobbled round to the other side of the desk and sat down in the visitor’s chair – somewhat defeated. This meeting clearly wasn’t going as he had imagined.
Lil rescued Abe’s chair from where it had skated, pulled it back to the desk and sat in it. Abe stood over her until she begrudgingly conceded the spot and went to perch on the arm of the leather settee instead.
Starkey cleared his throat and smoothed down the poncho. ‘What was I …? Ah yes. I believe that Peligan City is now the centre of an epidemic of spectral activity.’ Abe frowned back at him. ‘That is to say, it’s haunted.’
‘Ha, ha ha!’ Abe broadcast a sudden mocking laugh. Lil tried to replicate it but she started too high and had to drop an octave to get the right level of derision.
‘That’s crazy,’ she informed him.
Starkey whipped round to look at her with beady eyes. ‘Is it? Perhaps you have heard the tale of Ramon LeTeef, the infamous gangster who had evaded capture, then handed himself in and was found to be quite mad – babbling stories of the revenge of long-dead associates?’
Abe stood up and strolled over to the window, prised apart the blades of the Venetian blind and looked out. ‘Sounds like a great story; you should write it down.’
‘Oh, I have. You see, I have a witness who claims that three months ago, when you apprehended LeTeef, you walked into a haunted house, terrorised by a type-1 spectral manifestation.’
‘A what?’
‘A spirit, detective. A ghost.’ He let this word float around while the drip, drip, drip of melted snow trickled down the folds in his poncho, pooling on the floor around his chair in a donut-shaped puddle. ‘A very powerful and frightening ghost. Right here, in Peligan City.
‘And my witness told me that if I wanted to know more, Abe Mandrel was the man to talk to. You apprehended LeTeef,’ he continued to Abe. ‘I just want to know, what did you see?’
Lil reclaimed Abe’s vacated chair and leant across the desk on both elbows. ‘Who’s your contact?’
Starkey looked uncomfortable. ‘I have sworn to protect his identity.’
Lil gave Starkey the Penetrating Squint and he leant away from her as a low growl sounded in his ear and he turned to see Margaret sitting on the floor to his right. Abe completed the pincer movement, taking up position perched on the left-hand corner of the desk.
‘So it’s a man,’ said Lil. ‘Interesting.’
Starkey frowned at her and buttoned his lips.
They had him cornered; now it was time to turn the tables.
‘What I’m wondering,’ Lil said thoughtfully, ‘is how you even see ghosts to hunt them. I mean, they’re invisible, aren’t they?’
‘Aha, the tricks of the trade! I have these glasses, for instance. They have special filters on them – I use them to identify patterns of electromagnetic energy –’
‘Can I see them?’ Lil held out her hand and Starkey reluctantly handed them over.
‘I got them mail order,’ he continued. ‘Everyone should have a pair. And these are just the tip of the iceberg. I’ve seen equipment, experimental things …’ He put his fingers to his mouth to stopper it.
They looked just like ordinary orange-tinted glass. Lil handed them back.
Starkey frowned at the spectacles, pulled the sleeve of a check shirt out from beneath his elasticated cuff and tried to shine Lil’s thumbprint off one of the lenses. The lens popped out. Starkey bent down to pick it up and then knocked the back of his head on the corner of Abe’s desk, tipping over the pencil pot in the process. Tears sprang into his eyes.
Lil dived in to help pick up the scattered pens and pocketed a couple. Starkey took a deep breath, returned to the chair, pushed the lens back into the frame and put the glasses on again. Nedly cautiously crept out from the wall space and started walking towards the ghost hunter.
‘Stop!’ hissed Lil.
Starkey looked up sharply. ‘Stop what?’
‘Stop fooling around,’ Lil quickly explained.
Nedly stood right in front of Starkey.
‘Sorry, I-I’m –’ the ghost hunter stammered. ‘I’m a little accident-prone.’ He looked offended. ‘I don’t do it on purpose.’
‘He can’t see me. The glasses don’t work.’ Nedly sounded disappointed. He leant right across the desk and waved one hand in front of Starkey’s eyes. Lil could feel the hairs on the back of her neck begin to rise, but Starkey remained oblivious.
‘He can’t even feel me,’ muttered Nedly to Lil. ‘He’s like your mum, totally immune.’
‘Mr Mandrel.’ Starkey blinked earnestly at Abe. ‘I’ve spent my whole life in pursuit of proof that the spirits of the dead walk among us, but so far it has eluded me. Not so long ago I imagined ghosts to be lost and lonely souls whose lives had been snatched away – unable to leave the mortal world completely, they were stuck in limbo trying to right the wrongs that were done to them.’
Nedly’s eyes met Lil’s across the desk.
Starkey’s voice hardened. ‘But I have come to revise this opinion. Ghosts are not our friends. They can be unimaginably powerful and terrifying with a presence that goes way beyond cold spots and feelings of dread. We’re talking advanced psychokinesis, electromagnetic interference and actual bodily harm. They must be stopped and I intend to stop them. With or without your assistance.’ He got to his feet. ‘Peligan City requires an exorcism!’
Abe clenched and unclenched his jaw. He breathed out loudly through his nose and then he said, ‘Thanks all the same but I don’t know what you’re talking about. In my experience there’s no such thing as ghosts.’
The orange rungs of the electric fire flared and then grew dull and the room became several degrees cooler. Nedly walked over to the window and stood in the glare of snow light.
Lil gave Abe a frown.
Starkey headed for the door. ‘The people have a right to know what is happening.’
‘Well, don’t be surprised if they lock you up,’ said Abe.
Starkey turned and gave Abe a look of bitter disappointment. ‘I had hoped you would join us.’
‘Who’s us?’
Starkey squared up to Abe as much as he could and said with dignity, ‘The Peligan City Paranormal Society. We are meeting later this morning.’ He pulled the hood of his poncho back over his head. ‘You should come along, detective. There will be biscuits.’
Abe tried to snort in a way that suggested he obviously wasn’t the sort of person who could be lured in by biscuits.
‘I could come?’ volunteered Lil.
‘It’s not for children,’ Starkey informed her. ‘Ghosts are a serious business.’
‘Right,’ said Lil under her breath. ‘What would I know?’ She gave Nedly a
look that said, ‘You go, see what he’s up to’. Nedly returned it with a nod that said, ‘Leave it to me’.
Abe put his hand on the door as if he meant to close it, and preferably with Starkey on the other side. ‘Well, this has all been very interesting, Mr Starkey, and I’m sorry I couldn’t be more help, but it looks like someone has given you a bum steer.’
‘So it seems,’ Starkey replied cryptically. He patted Margaret on the head, saying, ‘Goodbye, strange little dog.’ Then he looked up at Abe. ‘You know, people in this town have seen things that have turned their hair white. Just like that streak you have there under your hat.’
Abe smiled grimly. ‘That’s called getting old, pal.’
Starkey gave one last look around the room and walked out, his poncho flapping like a cape.
Once he was out of earshot Abe muttered, ‘What a crackpot!’
Lil bit on her lip. ‘He was right, though, wasn’t he? Peligan City is haunted.’
They stood in the doorway, listening to Starkey’s tread on the stairs. A strangled-sounding yelp told them he had reached the rotten board on the second-to-last stair. Finally the click of the door opening and the bang of it shutting behind him meant they were alone.
Abe turned back to the office. ‘Hey, Nedly. What I said about not believing in ghosts – you know I didn’t mean it, right?’
‘Forget it,’ said Lil, giving him a hard stare. ‘He’s gone.’
Chapter 10
Peligan City Morgue
The snow followed the patterns of the wind as it blew around the city, twisting and swerving past street lamps, buffeting cars and freezing all those who were unlucky enough to be walking through it.
Abe and Lil left the car a block away and Margaret stayed behind to guard it, nestled in a Mexican rug with ‘Classical Hour’ on the radio and a strip of rawhide to keep her company.
Peligan City Morgue was located on a back street, round the corner from the hospital.
Abe rang the buzzer on the intercom. There was a click as someone picked up.
‘It’s me.’ Abe waited for the muffled reply and then elaborated. ‘Me, Abe Mandrel. Monbatsu said we could swing by, take a look at …’ He shrugged at Lil – neither knew exactly what Monbatsu wanted to show them so Abe went for the obvious. ‘A stiff.’