by Lucy Banks
“I saw everything,” Helen said after she’d caught her breath. She moved over to her mother and draped an arm around her shoulders, pulling her close. “Mum, thank god you’re okay.”
The older woman started to cry and buried her head against her daughter’s top. “They’ve got rid of the fetch,” she whispered. “It’s over, Helen. We’ve got our lives back. Can you believe it?”
“Well, you’ll still have to answer some fairly difficult questions when the police come,” Larry corrected with a sanctimonious nod. “They still need an official answer about why so many pensioners snuffed it in Lyme Regis, and we’ll all need to work together to come up with something convincing for the official records.”
“It’s not as though they’ll throw mum in prison though, is it?” Helen said with a nervous laugh.
“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Higgins muttered, folding his arms. “They’ll throw anything in prison these days.”
A groan interrupted them, and they all turned towards the direction of the noise.
“Mike!” Serena beamed, then hastily rearranged her features into the usual scowl. “You had us all terrified there. What were you thinking of, fronting up to the fetch like that?”
Mike shuddered. With difficulty, he hoisted himself up onto his knees. “Ugh,” he muttered, closing his eyes as he sat upright. “Nice to see you too, love.”
She softened and touched his shoulder, just once. “You scared me, you really did.”
He looked over, grinned, then burped. “I aim to please.” He looked horribly pale still, and his throat was bobbing in a most unusual manner. Without warning, he opened his mouth. Instantly, a jet of vomit fired out like water from a fire extinguisher, covering Serena’s lap and dripping onto the ground. She looked down at the revolting mess, her mouth in a perfect circle of horror.
“Oh dearie me,” Pamela muttered with an expression that suggested she might be trying not to laugh. “I bet you feel much better after that, don’t you, Mike?”
“Sorry about that,” Mike mumbled. He leant over, dry-heaved a few more times, then wiped his mouth.
“You . . . you puked all over my clothes!” Serena’s expression curdled as she flapped like a flustered chicken. “Ugh! It . . . it stinks!”
Mike belched again, then studied her—much as an artist would look at a completed canvas. “Ah, I always said black wasn’t your colour anyway,” he said with a grin.
“You . . . disgusting pig!”
“Time to go back to the hotel?” Miss Wellbeloved suggested, grimacing.
“Definitely time to go back to the bloody hotel,” Higgins agreed. “Then time to go home.”
Chapter 21: Heading to Scotland
After a final celebratory lunch in the pub on the seafront, not to mention a cheerful conversation with Curtis Philpot, telling him the good news about the case, Larry Higgins and his team prepared to depart. They gathered in the car park under the glare of the hotel owner, who was watching them through the net curtains, presumably to check they were definitely leaving the premises and not planning to sneak back in when he wasn’t looking.
“Well, I’d like to say it’s been a pleasure,” Higgins began as he rummaged in his coat pocket for his car keys. “But it hasn’t. So I shan’t.”
Luke hoisted his rucksack onto his shoulder and held his arms out. “C’mere, you guys.” He hugged each of them in turn. “It’s been a blast. What a week, eh?”
“You can certainly say that again,” Miss Wellbeloved said, returning Luke’s squeeze with enthusiasm. “You’ve been a joy to work with, I shall quite miss you.” She stood back, then added, “You too, Dimitri, of course.”
Dimitri gave a small bow, then, to everyone’s surprise, pulled Pamela into a bear hug. “It has been an honour working with you,” he declared as he pulled out a tissue and patted his eyes.
Pamela giggled. “Oh my goodness me, young man. What a nice thing to say!”
“You are a highly respected psychic,” he continued earnestly. “I have enjoyed seeing you at work. It was . . . educational.”
“Which is another way of saying it’s an experience he won’t forget in a hurry,” Larry growled as he yanked open the car door. “Come on, you two, enough with the fond farewells.”
“Goodbye Larry,” Miss Wellbeloved said. She trotted around to the driver’s side and held out her hand. He eyed it for a moment, then took it, as though handling a rare, dangerous animal.
“It’s been good to see you again, Jennifer.”
“You too. Have a safe journey back.”
“Yes, make sure you don’t crash the car or anything,” Ribero muttered as he leant against Mike’s van. “A world without the Higgins would be a terrible thing, yes?”
“Shut up, Ribero.”
“You first.”
Miss Wellbeloved rolled her eyes. “We’ll be in touch soon,” she said as Larry hoisted his bulk into the driver’s seat. “To sort out the final reports and everything. After we’ve got back from Scotland, obviously.”
“I still can’t believe you’re making us all go up there,” Serena whined, watching the others get into the car. “How come they get to go home and we don’t?”
“Because Kester suggested that we go to Scotland,” Ribero snapped above the noise of the gravel as the car pulled out of the drive. “So it is our responsibility, right?”
“Send Kester up on his own. It was his dumb idea.”
“So much for solidarity!” Kester squeaked, feeling rather put out. “If it hadn’t been for my suggestion, the fetch never would have got in the extinguisher device in the first place!” He waved at Luke and Dimitri, who were grinning through the car window.
“See ya later, guys!”
He grinned. Luke’s enthusiasm was infectious. Kester suspected he was going to miss him. Dimitri less so, though he had his moments. And Higgins? Not at all, really, though Kester was starting to get used to his smug comments and irritable outbursts.
The car rolled out onto the main road, leaving them in silence. They watched it drive down the road and out of sight, then all sighed in unison. Kester could tell from their expressions that nobody was particularly enthused about the task ahead of them.
Ribero clapped his hands, snapping them out of their thoughts, and gestured to his saloon car. “Right. Who is coming with me, and who is travelling in the van?”
Unsurprisingly, everyone apart from Mike wanted to go in the car. Mike took this as a personal insult and patted the side of the van like a protective parent whose child had just been bullied.
“You know, this van hasn’t broken down in three months now,” he muttered, lips pursed together in protestation.
“Apart from the journey back from Larry’s offices a few weeks ago,” Kester piped up.
Mike glowered mutinously.
“This is a ten-hour drive,” Pamela stated. “No offence, my love, but there’s no way I’m sitting in that death trap when Julio’s got his nice leather-seated car on offer.”
“I’ll come with you,” Kester volunteered. He felt sorry for Mike but promptly regretted his decision as soon as he turned to look at the van, which, thanks to its broken suspension, was leaning at a worryingly drunken angle. I’m sure we won’t break down again, he told himself, surveying the rusty wheel rims and flat tyres with considerable trepidation. Well, hopefully it won’t.
“I’ve phoned ahead,” Miss Wellbeloved said as she strode over to Ribero’s car. “I’ve managed to book us into a bed and breakfast on the outskirts of Dundee. If the traffic isn’t too bad, we should be there around midnight.”
“Fabulous,” Mike muttered, yawning. “Another fun day. Tell you what, I can’t wait to be shot of this spirit. It’s been a real pain in the arse.”
“Agreed,” Kester said. He was looking forward to heading back and catching up with Anya and didn’
t want her to think that he’d lost interest. It would be absolutely typical, he thought as he climbed into the van, feeling the suspension protest as he placed his weight on the seat, if I managed to make a mess of the one and only relationship I’ve ever managed to have before it even got started.
After a few false starts, the van finally roared to life, spitting black smoke into the car park behind them. They rolled out onto the street, past the fishermen’s cottages and quaint Victorian townhouses. Kester watched out of his window and felt strangely sad to be leaving. It had been the most stressful week of his life, but he’d almost become used to Lyme Regis and its windswept, sea-soaked charm. It was as though someone had pressed pause on the town at some point in the nineteenth century, and it had remained the same ever since. He rather liked that. Things always seemed much simpler when modern life didn’t take over so much. In fact, he thought with a wry smile, without the murderous spirit, it would have been positively idyllic.
As they groaned up the hill, he surveyed the distant woodland, then Grace McCready’s house as they passed it. I hope she and her daughter will be alright, he thought, thinking back to the cliff-top—the terror he’d experienced, the horror of believing Helen was going to jump. He wondered if Grace would struggle to live with the guilt of what she’d done, even though she hadn’t had much choice in the matter.
At least their part in this is over now, he thought ruefully. That’s certainly not the case for us. He glanced over his shoulder at Luke’s extinguisher box, sitting innocently in the back of the van, and shuddered.
They travelled along the entire length of the country as the landscape changed from the rolling hills of Dorset to the industrial landscapes of the Midlands and the North. Kester relaxed in the seat, peering out of the window with fascination. Apart from travelling down to Exeter to find his father, he’d hardly ever been anywhere, and he was entranced by the scenery. It’s all so diverse, he thought. This country is like a huge patchwork quilt, and each section is completely different from the last. It made him realise what a sheltered life he’d had in the past and how little he understood his own homeland.
The van finally bounced over the border into Scotland at around nine o’clock in the evening. It was pitch-black, which meant Kester could get no sense of what it was actually like. He glanced over to Mike, who was hanging over the steering wheel, eyelids drooping alarmingly.
“You need to hurry up and learn to drive,” Mike mumbled and opened the window to let some fresh air in. “Ten hours behind the wheel isn’t good for anyone.”
“Especially after you’ve just been savaged by a spirit,” Kester added.
“Yes, exactly. I’m knackered.”
“And you managed to puke all over Serena.”
Mike grinned. “That was pretty awful, wasn’t it? I doubt she’ll ever speak to me again.”
“I don’t know,” Kester mused as he fiddled with the heating. He was fairly sure it had stopped working about three hours ago, but he thought it was worth a try anyway. “She was pretty upset when you got knocked out by the fetch.”
“Was she?” Mike looked over. “Not that it matters, of course. It just surprises me. I’d have thought she’d have been dancing with delight to see me unconscious.”
Kester shook his head. “No, quite the opposite. She was actually stroking your hair at one point.”
Mike smiled, then coughed. “That doesn’t sound like our Serena at all, does it?”
“And you were very gallant, jumping in front of the fetch to protect her.”
“Yeah, alright mate.” Mike held up a hand. “I can see what you’re trying to do here, and you can pack it in right now.”
“I have no idea what you mean,” Kester replied with the most innocent smile he could muster.
Mike sniffed, then shifted gears. “You know exactly what I mean.”
Two hours later, they finally pulled into their bed and breakfast—a tall Georgian townhouse on the outskirts of a village just outside Dundee. Managing to find the place, using just Miss Wellbeloved’s terse instructions on the phone and a battered old map of the UK, was a miracle. Nonetheless, they had arrived, and Kester was relieved to see it was a much nicer establishment than the one they’d left behind in Lyme Regis. Mike pulled the van to a halt next to Ribero’s sleek saloon car and leant over the wheel with relief.
“See, we didn’t break down,” he muttered and closed his eyes. “I told you. Never doubt the power of the van, alright?”
Kester climbed out and stretched his limbs. His neck ached. In fact, every part of him was feeling decidedly delicate. He needed to sleep, preferably in a place that wasn’t either an uncomfortable bunk bed or an even more uncomfortable van. He looked at his watch. 11:25 p.m. “You must be shattered,” he called to Mike. Mike grunted in response.
The elegant front door opened smoothly, as though welcoming their presence. It was a good sign, Kester thought with approval. At once, he spotted an envelope on the reception desk with their names on it. He pulled out a note and a set of keys.
“Hello Mike and Kester,” he read aloud. “Hopefully you won’t arrive too much later than we did. We’ve already checked in and gone to bed. I took the liberty of checking you in too, as the owner of the bed and breakfast wanted to go to sleep. You’re in room five, next to Julio. Make sure you lock the front door before you come up. We’ll meet tomorrow at breakfast, around 8:30 a.m. See you tomorrow, Jennifer.”
Without a word, Mike scooped the keys up and headed to the staircase, clutching the bannister for support.
“I dunno about you,” he muttered, keeping his feet to the outside of the stairs to avoid creaking, “but I am getting heartily sick of wearing the same clothes now. This isn’t my favourite shirt anymore, I can tell you. In fact, I can’t bear the sight of it now.”
I’m a little bit sick of the smell of it, too, Kester thought after locking the front door behind them. He was walking downwind of Mike, which didn’t help. Mind you, my own clothes are no better. His beard was growing at a rapid rate. He couldn’t quite decide whether it suited him or not. I’ll have to ask Anya when I get back, he thought. He suspected she was the type to like rugged men.
The door to their bedroom was just along the corridor; to Kester, it was the most welcome sight in the world, save for his own bedroom back home. Stepping inside, they collapsed simultaneously on the twin beds. The room was small and spartan, but it was comfortable, which was all Kester wanted. He whipped his phone out and sent Anya a text to let her know where he was and that he planned to be home tomorrow.
Hopefully she might want to meet up this weekend, he thought with a yawn. He looked over. Mike was already snoring, laid out on top of the frilly duvet cover like a ragdoll. Kester chuckled. Poor Mike, he must be absolutely out of his mind with tiredness to fall asleep that quickly.
Folding his clothes on the chair, Kester clambered into bed. Within about five minutes, he’d fallen asleep too.
The next morning, he opened a bleary eye. Initially he was confused about where he was. Sunlight streamed in through netted curtains, and the room glowed like the inside of a seashell, light tickling the pink sheets and frilly eiderdowns. He looked over to see Mike, still in exactly the same position he’d fallen asleep in the night before, snoring like a bear in hibernation.
Kester glanced at his phone. No reply from Anya yet. Maybe she hasn’t looked at her phone since last night, he thought, then noticed the time.
“It’s quarter to nine!” he squawked to nobody in particular. “How did we manage to sleep that long?”
Mike stirred, opened an eye, then closed it again, muttering.
“Mike, we’ve got to get up.” Kester attempted to sit up and nearly fell off the bed. “Miss Wellbeloved said we had to meet them for breakfast at 8:30, which was fifteen minutes ago.”
The only response was a non-decipherable grumble and possibly a
muttered expletive.
“Mike?”
“I said no.”
Kester sighed, stood up, and grabbed his shirt. “Seriously, we need to get downstairs,” he persisted. “Let’s get on with this job, then we can go home, right?”
Mike groaned and rolled to face the other wall. “Then I have to drive all the way back again. That’s a horrible thought.”
“Ask one of the others to drive?”
“Nah, they don’t know the van like I do. They’ll only make her break down.” With a moan, Mike sat up, then grabbed his neck. “Christ, I feel like an elephant has stamped on me.”
Kester grabbed him under the armpit and tugged him up. “Come on, or else I’m going to leave you here.”
“Suits me fine.”
“Then you won’t get any of the nice full Scottish breakfast that’s currently cooking downstairs.”
Mike paused, then swung himself out of bed. “Fair point.”
Downstairs, the others were already in the dining room, sat around an elegant round table which looked like it had escaped directly from the nearest period drama. Lace doilies covered the surface, and frilly napkins were laid beside each placemat.
“You seem to have rather a loose interpretation of half-past eight,” Miss Wellbeloved remarked, lip curled at the sight of them both. “Mike, did you sleep in your clothes last night?”
“You try driving for a whole day,” Mike retorted as he slumped into the empty seat next to Pamela.
Kester squeezed next to Ribero. “I’m sorry we overslept,” he explained, muffling a yawn behind his hand. “I completely forgot to set my alarm. I don’t think I’ve ever been so tired in my life.”
“I already ordered your breakfast,” his father said. For someone who had recently been attacked by a fetch then driven from one end of the country to the other, he looked remarkably chipper.
“Please say it has plenty of bacon and eggs on it,” Mike said, reaching for the orange juice.