“No, no.” Bertha turned back to me from her stack of papers with a sharp smile and sickly sweet tone. “Just do them in any order you feel like. In fact, you can just pick and choose which ones you do. It’s not like someone has taken time and effort to arrange that list in that specific order so the assignments get completed at exactly the right time.”
“A simple ‘no’ would have sufficed.”
Bertha folded her arms, her diminutive stature and strands of escaped auburn hair making her look like a petulant fairy. “No.”
“It’s like dealing with children,” I mumbled to my clipboard.
I was halfway down the corridor before I realised I didn’t have a pen. I turned backed and quickly snagged the one I’d used to sign the logbook. I looked up to check no one had noticed me “borrow” it and saw Alex staring at me. He had hold of Bertha’s upper arm.
She used the distraction to shake him off. “You need something else?” she asked.
I held up the pen. “I’m good.”
Several assignments later I was standing inside the foyer of the theatre staring at the self-important, two-dimensional face of Jeremy Thomas Leith. I’d been dreading this assignment all morning, especially since I had three messages for him. I’d been tempted to delay this one until after I’d eaten, or possibly not to show up at all, but after Bertha’s reprimand earlier I figured the world would probably stop spinning if I didn’t deliver them. Possibly. Probably. Who knew?
Sighing, I walked along the corridor, reading through the messages so I didn’t have to read them off the clipboard, while my stomach growled demanding food. I still found it odd that it did that. I was dead after all.
Raised voices echoed along the empty corridor.
“That’s not what we agreed,” snapped a familiar female voice.
“If you can’t hold up your end of our bargain, explain to me, sweetheart, why should I hold up mine?” Jeremy sounded like his usual delightfully slimy self.
“There was nothing I could do about that.”
His voice came through the door thin and whiny. “There’s always something you can do. You need to be more inventive.”
I was sure it was the same girl I’d heard him arguing with on my first visit when he’d tried to pass it off as the speakerphone. Intrigued and incredibly hungry, I pushed open the door. His head snapped in my direction and he smiled, all alone in the room.
“Sweetheart.” He spread his arms wide. “What a surprise.”
“Having more trouble with your long distance ladylove?” I asked and nodded to his phone in the corner of his desk, the screen clearly displaying the charging icon. “Is holding the phone just too much for you?” I was tempted to check behind the screen for the mystery woman since she obviously hadn’t been on the other end of the phone, but his love life wasn’t my business and, damn it, I was hungry.
“I like to multitask.” He offered me a salacious wink. If I’d had a full stomach I would’ve emptied the contents all over the floor. “You have messages for me?”
“Pauline says that the car keys are behind the dresser in the dining room, Chelsea says if it’s a boy she’d like Frank and Ella to name him Jacques after his grandfather, and Louisa says no.”
“Three messages from such a pretty girl. Must be my lucky day.”
“Must be,” I agreed, already preparing to tunnel.
“I’ll let you know if I need anything else.” A smug smile spread across his face just as I tunnelled. “Bridget.”
∞
I all but flopped down next to Sabrina at lunch and was about to start shovelling the steaming delicious looking steak pie and chips down my throat when I noticed Sabrina’s enormous, satisfied grin. I was going to tell her about my morning right after I’d eaten, but her expression told me I needed to ask about that first.
I put my fork back down with a sigh. “What did you do?”
“What’s with the accusatory tone?” Sabrina raised an eyebrow that would’ve been stern except she couldn’t quite quell her smile.
“Sorry, I’m tired, I didn’t sleep.” I picked up my fork again. I just needed to eat. “And I’m cranky.” And Jeremy knew my name. The list went on.
“I forgive you,” Sabrina said. “But only because I did do something. After you stood me up—”
“Yeah, I’m sorry about that. It was movie night with my housemates.”
Sabrina’s face screwed up in disgust. “It’s tonight in our house. I keep feigning migraines.”
“Yeah, I tried to say I was tired.” I loaded up my fork. “Oz didn’t buy it.”
“Stupid man.” Sabrina shook her head, lips pursed to hide her smile. “Okay, let me tell you this quickly before the others join us. There was nothing anywhere about Barry so I assume his records must be in one of the medical departments, but in Jim’s file there was mention of something called ‘Operation Bluebottle’ and of him reporting to a committee.”
I stared at her, fork halfway to my mouth. “You’re making this up.”
She grinned at me, overly pleased with herself. “Nope. That’s all I could really find, though, so …”
I motioned with my fork for her to carry on since I’d shoved an enormous forkful of pie into my mouth.
“I shook the tree.” She smiled cryptically, gestured with her head to the far end of the canteen and sipped her coffee.
“Did I mention I was both sleepy and cranky?”
“Fine. I sent certain people notes.”
“Who?” I glanced around the canteen. “And what did they say?”
“Fenton’s friends mainly, since that’s most likely who murdered him.”
I paused, fork halfway to my mouth. Again. “What?”
“Murders are usually committed by your nearest and dearest.” Sabrina sipped her coffee and scanned the canteen. “Comforting thought, isn’t it?”
“On that reassuring note, I have to visit Porscha later.”
“To do what?”
I shrugged. “Move some stuff.”
“You think you’ll see that lady again? If you do, get her to tell you how to do that eyeball hanging out stuff.”
“Top of my list,” I promised.
“And try and pump her for info,” she added as an afterthought.
“I will.” I spoke around my mouthful. My mother would’ve turned in her grave at my lack of table manners, if she’d been dead, that was.
“Afternoon, ladies.” Pete sat opposite Sabrina and started shovelling huge chunks of battered fish into his mouth.
“Another beautiful day.” Charlie smiled as he sat down as well. “Days like this make me glad I’m a facilitator.”
“Can you even see the sun from your office?” Pete prodded Sabrina with a smile.
She smiled back but it was all teeth. “Don’t antagonise me, or I might mistakenly shred your file.”
“Speaking of internal ineptitude,” Pete said and winked at a scowling Sabrina, “I got a very odd note in the post this morning.”
“Saying what?” I tried to ask as nonchalantly as possible. Pete fished the note out of his pocket and handed it to me. I read it aloud. “I know what you did. I have evidence.”
“What did you do?” Sabrina blinked innocently at him.
He grinned and winked at her again. “That’d be telling.”
“Who’s it from?” I didn’t expect him to tell me he suspected us but it would’ve been odd if I hadn’t asked.
Pete shrugged. “Doesn’t say. If the sender doesn’t write their name there’s no way to tell.”
“What? Really?” Though when I thought about it, it wasn’t that different from Royal Mail.
“All letters are dropped in the main mailbox for sorting, so there’s no way to tell.” Charlie seemed as unperturbed about the message as Pete. “Probably just got the address mixed up. It happens.”
“Mix up or not, neither of you are bothered that the note was accusing you of something?” I asked.
Pete threw Char
lie a quick glance and then shrugged. “If they had evidence they’d either be trying to blackmail me or would have told the police, so no, I’m not bothered.”
Sabrina jabbed a finger in Pete’s direction. “So, you have done something.”
Pete nodded and held his hands up in surrender. “Yes, you got me. I’m the one murdering people and stuffing them into Bridget’s locker.”
Sabrina looked down her nose at me. “Told you.”
“So how are you liking working on your own?” Charlie asked, jumping in before the conversation went completely off track.
Jeremy leapt to the front of my mind. “How can I refuse a summoning?”
“Come on, Bridge.” Pete groaned like an ignored teacher. “I’ve told you.”
“No, you told me how to refuse a summoning when they didn’t know your real name.” I pointed my fork at him, yet another table manners no-no. “How do I refuse it when they do?”
Pete and Charlie exchanged a look I couldn’t read before Charlie spoke. “You told a medium your real name?”
“Yes. I told one medium because no one said I shouldn’t. Which is” – I see-sawed a splayed hand – “more or less fine. But that slimy Jeremy guy found out on his own.”
“The one who …” Sabrina’s unfinished sentence hung in the air.
“Yes.” I pointed to her. “That one.”
“The one who what?” Charlie asked looking between us.
“The one who kept calling her sweetheart,” Sabrina expertly covered.
“You refuse it the same way you do if they don’t have your name, but it depends on the strength of their gift. They might be able to pull you whatever you do. But that’s not the question. The question is how did he find out your name?” Pete said.
“I figured he’d have looked in the local papers for recent deaths.” I shrugged. “Found my picture.”
Pete’s eyebrows lowered into a straight line. “Maybe, but you have a bit of a London accent so he’d be looking in those. And that would be like finding a needle in a haystack.”
“Not to mention a lady getting hit by a bus is hardly national news, so it would be a very local paper,” Sabrina added.
“So what are you saying?” I looked around at three serious faces.
Charlie’s rubbed at his forehead as if to smooth away the worry lines. “They’re saying someone told him.”
∞
I landed gently in Porscha’s bedroom a few hours later and heard a cat screeching in pain somewhere downstairs. Forgetting I was dead and there’d probably be little I could do about it anyway, I charged down the spiral staircase and followed the sounds of the distressed cat. I burst into the kitchen to find Porscha was the injured cat. She was singing along to the radio at full blast while waving the meat cleaver she was using to slice cherry tomatoes around in the air.
“I know what you’re wondering,” the ghost lady said, popping up beside me and thankfully looking completely unmauled. “You’re wondering if her recent loss has made her mad.”
“I wasn’t.”
“Yes, you were,” she chided. “But she was always like this. It was one of the reasons my Barry loved her so. She’s such a free spirit. Heaven knows he needed that. Always with his eyes glued to those computers.”
“So, you are Barry’s mum?” I asked and she nodded, still smiling a little wistfully at Porscha before pulling herself back to the present.
“Who are you?” She glanced down at my jumpsuit. “And why are you dressed in that ghastly sack? The colour does nothing for you, dear.”
“I know,” I exclaimed, relived to have someone understand. “But it’s my uniform. I’m a facilitator.”
“Really?” Her eyes lit up. “Isn’t that interesting? Is that why you were here the other day?”
“Er, not exactly. Madame Zorina, a medium Barry visited, thinks Porscha killed him.”
Her lips formed an open pout and she tilted her head slightly. “And how do you fit into that?”
I gave her a helpless shrug. “She asked me to look into it.”
“You’re a facilitator, not an investigator. Why are you helping her? And why does she think Porscha killed him?” The lady perched on a breakfast bar stool and patted the one next to her. “You need to give me the whole story here, dear, not just the highlights.”
“I’m helping her because otherwise she’ll keep summoning me, and I have no clue why she thinks Porscha killed him but she is convinced she did.” I climbed up onto the stool, using the counter as leverage. “Mainly, she’s worried about her reputation since she told Barry to marry Porscha, and if it gets out that Porscha killed him it’s the end of the medium's career.”
“She sounds darling. Just brush her summoning aside. It’s not like she has your real name, so—” She paused, taking in my expression. “She has you’re real name? What are they teaching you children nowadays?”
“Talking about that, is there any chance you could teach Sabrina and me that gross stuff you do?”
“‘That gross stuff’?” she repeated, lips twitching into a smile. “Absolutely. We’ll start as soon as you help me find my Barry. I’m a persona non grata with the authorities at the moment. Don’t know if you noticed that from our last visit. So I can hardly walk into the bureau and ask.”
Great. Yet another bad influence. And I’d been such a good girl in life. Mostly. “What did you do?”
“I simply disagreed with the way they run things.” She smiled as if it were no big deal. “I like to think of myself as an outlaw, like Guy Fawkes, I suppose.”
“He was hanged, drawn and quartered, y’know?” I said before I could help it.
“Yes, thank you, dear, I’m not illiterate.” She gave her fringe a quick tug as though that would help it grow, and it made me wonder why she didn’t just fake it like the gory transformation. “Now, you find my son and I’ll help you with ‘that gross stuff’.”
I tapped my chin thoughtfully then nodded. “Sounds like a fair trade.”
She watched me carefully. “You already know where he is, don’t you?”
“I do, but there’s a small problem.”
“Welcome to your afterlife. What is it?”
“He doesn’t exactly know he’s dead?”
She blinked. “What?”
“He thinks he’s still alive.”
“I understood you the first time, dear.” She tutted at me, stood and yanked on the hem of her jacket to straighten it. “Where is he?”
“In a medical facility up in Scotland somewhere. I can ask Sabrina for—” Barry’s mum disappeared before I could finish the sentence. “Better details,” I added to myself.
I checked my assignment sheet. All I needed to do was move a photo frame upstairs so I turned from the still wailing Porscha, wanting to get my assignments finished, and walked right into a solid wall of black.
“Whoops.” Officer Leonard held me gently by the upper arms and stepped back. “Easy there, Ms Sway.”
“Oh. Er …” I stepped back just out of his easy reach. “Sorry.”
He smiled. “No harm, no foul.” He glanced around the kitchen. “What are you doing here?”
“My job.” I waved my clipboard at him, quickly collecting my calm.
“I don’t suppose you’ve happened to see anyone else while you’ve been here?” he asked, and I stared pointedly at Porscha. He followed my gaze. “Anyone of a more dead persuasion, I mean.”
“I haven’t, Officer Leonard.” I gave him my best I’m-super-helpful-please-don’t-arrest-me smile. “Who is it you’re looking for?”
He blew out a breath and shook his head casually as if it didn’t matter.
“Okay, well.” I pointed over his shoulder. “I have to complete my assignment now so if you’ll excuse me?”
“Absolutely.” Officer Leonard moved from the doorway and made a sweeping gesture with his hand, indicating I was free to be on my way. I walked straight past the masked David without even a glance in his direction
.
“You certainly do seem to be a magnet for trouble, Ms Sway.” Officer Leonard called after me when I was halfway up the stairs. “Why is that, do you think?”
I turned and gave him a shrug. “I’m charismatic.”
“Yes you are,” he agreed pleasantly and gave me a salute before both he and David disappeared.
I moved the picture frame from one bedside table to another and hightailed it on to my last assignment of the day.
It was at the local police station. The assignment was simple: move a lady’s handbag from the floor on the left side of the desk to the right side. I moved the bag, ticked the assignment and debated whether it would still be a wise idea to take advantage of the situation. I had planned to snoop around the homicide department to see if I could find any information on Barry’s death, but the lunch conversation and the sudden appearance of the GBs at Barry’s house had thrown me a little.
However, I didn’t know when we’d get a chance to snoop like this again, and since I was supposed to be there for work reasons I had a legitimate reason to use if the GBs turned up. Well, legitimate enough.
I’d never had cause to be inside a police station until I died but it seemed to work the same as the dead version. Lots of desks and people milling about in uniform. Following the helpful signs, I navigated the beige walls and beige floor and walked into the very beige homicide department. It looked like every other department I’d passed, but instead of the usual black and white uniforms the staff wore plain clothes to make them look less like police officers. They didn’t.
I sneaked between the tightly packed desks, flicking through files for any mention of Barry’s name on the labels as I passed, and then the fates decided to smile down on me.
“Jones,” a tall, sombre man in a crumpled grey suit growled as he emerged from a broom cupboard office. “What’s happing with the Harlow case?”
“Not much,” Jones, a man with an alarming resemblance to a chipmunk, replied. “I need to speak to the fiancée again. She’s not telling us everything.”
Beyond Dead Page 18