The Dead Speak Ill Of The Living (The Dead Speak Paranormal Mysteries Book 1)

by Robert Wilde

  “We’ve had some accusations levelled against you. A number of unexplained disappearances have been linked to you, so we really need to know where you were on certain dates, just for form, of course.”

  Grell was able to give an alibi for each date, as he was always with a group of friends on those nights.

  “And if I was to ask you about a cult of cat worshippers?”

  “Cat what?”

  “People who, err, worship cats?”

  “I love Tompkins, but I don’t know what you mean.”

  “I completely understand. Could I have a look in the cellar please?”

  “Of course,” and the two went over to the door. Once that was opened, the light already on, Devon peered down into the depths.

  “Do go down and take a look,” Grell offered.

  Devon nodded and descended, but he was already wondering what the odour was. It didn’t do to make a scene in front of the public, but this stank, oh, it’s full of cats in cages.

  Devon froze. Cats in cages? That’s exactly what the report said he’d find. So in that case there’d be an altar, yes, and skulls on a she…

  Shit, there were skulls on a shelf. Realising that the report was true, Devon turned to look up at Grell, who slammed the door shut and pulled the switch. The doors to each cage flicked open, and the flesh eating cats leapt out and looked at Devon. Then they had a police officer for lunch.

  When Dee had returned from the police she’d caught up with the rest of the group at the nearest coffee shop, and had a nice lunch. They decided to leave the police some time to act before telling the ghost, and it was also decided just Dee and Joe go rather than the whole group because it was they who’d spoken to Nathan initially, and there was no need to confuse things now because explaining might be a delicate task, although both would have felt better leaving it to Pohl and her decades of experience flannelling academics and students.

  But that time was now, and Dee parked up and the couple walked confidently to the front door of the property, which was still for sale, and used a key taken from Grell’s house to open the door. Then they walked up to the main bedroom, put the machine on the ground, and flicked it on.

  “Ah, you two, I thought you were never coming back. Did you accept my offer?”

  “And hello to you as well,” Dee sighed.

  “Sorry, sorry. Hello. Bought any houses recently?”

  “We’ve been busy, and yes, we have sort of decided to accept your offer.”

  “Sort of?” The digital voice was actually quite good at relaying sarcasm and different tones now Joe had been tinkering with it.

  “We will help you achieve justice,” Dee said, knowing what was coming next.

  “Jus… that’s a liberal way of saying ‘we’re not killing him’ isn’t it.”

  “Well, yes, that’s exactly what it is.”

  “Fucksticks.”

  “I like that, can I use it.”

  Dee glared at Joe, “he’s dead you don’t need permission.”

  “So what are you bunch of do gooders going to actually do to help me?”

  “We have gathered proof that your brother is a killer.” Joe said proudly.

  “Ah, you can prove he killed me.”

  “Actually,” Dee took over, “it’s more than that. Your brother is part of a cat worshipping cult who’ve killed eleven other people.”

  There was a pause. “Can you say that again?”

  Dee did.

  “I wasn’t expecting that.”

  “No, but we took all the evidence to the police and an officer should be there as we speak.”

  “What sort of evidence?”

  “Skulls, ritual shit, written notes.”

  “Mother’s cunt!”

  “Quite.” Perhaps it was good Pohl wasn’t here after all.

  “And you’re certain they’re going to nail him for this?”

  “How can they not, it’s a lot of skulls.” Dee smiled at a job well done.

  “Ah,” said the voice.

  “Ah?”

  “As useless as you’ve been as killing him, I feel obliged to warn you.”

  “Warn us now?”

  “My brother just got out of a car outside and is coming up the pathway. And he’s got a cat and a gun.”

  “Did you say a cat?” Joe asked.

  “Let’s just focus on the gun here,” Dee said looking around.

  “I don’t think he’s been arrested,” said the voice.

  “Thanks for pointing that the fuck out. Right, Joe, any sudden bright ideas?”

  “Actually, just one, but I think it’ll work.”

  A police operator back at headquarters was having an uneventful day until a call came in. Well, ‘call’ is a bit too glorified, because while it definitely came from a police officer, it was more a series of screams than anything approaching talking. It took a while for the operator to work out the information being conveyed, and that information was unquestionably urgent: PC Devon was in a lot of shit, send help now. Which was just the sort of job a police operator is ready for, and that was why all available vehicles were sent barrelling through the town to slam into park out Stuart Grell’s house.

  Police don’t take kindly to other police officers screaming a lot, and just to prove that this was an understatement the first two to enter after the door was kicked in were armed with submachine guns and a licence to use them. They quickly cleared the ground floor, but they found no Devon, no Grell and heard no noises, at which point DC Maquire arrived, rushed in and assessed the situation. Which meant opening the cellar door and looking down it.

  Devon was at the bottom, but they were too late. He was lying on his back, eyes chewed out, throat bleeding, and very dead. Cats were walking around and over him, chewing away on the exposed flesh.

  Two firearms officers stood behind Maquire and looked down.

  “Is he alive?” one asked out of hope rather than expectation.

  Maquire tilted his head to one side. “If he’s alive, then you’re allowed to shoot those cats to facilitate our medical teams going down there. How does that sound?”

  “Pragmatic and just,” the woman with the gun replied.

  “Then please clear our path.”

  Shortly after Maquire and a medical team descended into the cellar. As they tended to the body, deciding it was indeed a body, Maquire looked around. The cages as Dee had said, the altar as Dee had said, the shelf with the skulls. He had misjudged the woman and the result was a man’s death. A hazard of policing, but never something you truly got over, even if no one would begrudge him putting a cat cult on the crazy pile. Worse came in often and was bullshit, so why would this be any different?

  Anyway, Grell was still out there, so where could he be? He might have run for the coast, he might be hiding with his buddies, he might be anywhere. But Maquire had a sudden flash of intuition, so he jogged up the stairs.

  “Can someone find out where Nathan Grell, the wanted man’s brother lived please? Quickly.”

  That would be too easy, but it was worth sending someone to look. Or rather, quite a few someone’s armed with guns and very short tempers.

  Then Maquire paused. Not only was Grell missing, but where was the rich cat? Tom something? Would someone run off with a millionaire cat? No, not unless they were insane. So Grell might really be going back to the flat.

  Stuart Grell held Tompkins in one arm, and a gun in the other hand. He’d arrived at his house, because it was his now, and discovered the front door unlocked. Believing that something odd was happening anyway, Grell proceeded to search the house. He started downstairs, because that was logical, but found no one, so then processed upstairs and nipped in every bedroom, and then the bathroom. Nobody here, and Tompkins hadn’t detected anyone, and Stuart assumed his super cat senses would pick things up. The fact that Tompkins had realised two people were hiding in the fitted wardrobes and didn’t feel the need to mention it hadn’t crossed Stuart’s mind.

 
But there was something odd, and that was a metal box in the main bedroom. It was on the ground, although there wasn’t anywhere else to put it, and Grell had never seen it before. He paused, stood over it, and then heard a voice.

  “You bastard.”

  Grell didn’t connect the voice and the box, he merely thought he was hearing a voice from the heavens, the digital sound transformed in his head into the sound of revenge.

  “Nathan, you’re…”

  “A ghost, a fucking ghost because of you.”

  “You’re haunting here? No, you’re haunting me?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Did you send the police after me, did you?”

  “Yes,” and Nathan decided to claim some credit, “yes I did, I sent them to hunt you down and lock you away to rot.”

  “But I’m your brother!” Stuart whined.

  “I’m your brother too and you fucking killed me!”

  “I had to do that, Tompkins wanted me to do that, didn’t you Tomps.”

  “You think my cat is talking to you?”

  “I know, and the fact you ignored him is reason enough to remove you.”

  “You just wanted my money!”

  “Money? I wanted Tomps safe and served, as all cats should be.”

  “Fucksocks, you’re as mental as they said you were.”

  “Who said?” Stuart started to look around suspiciously.

  As Nathan realised he’d made a mistake, it was at this point that another ghost in the house decided to help. Tompkins wasn’t the first cat to ever have lived with Nathan, and now the box made another noise, transferring the sound of a cat’s hisses and meows.

  “What’s it saying Tompkins,” Stuart asked, “what’s it saying?”

  Tompkins, the fat cat of leisure listened to this voice, and soon came to realise what had happened to his previous owner. At which point he reached up and bit Stuart in the neck.

  Screaming, with a cat hanging off him, the living Grell let the gun drop to the floor, at which point the wardrobe doors behind him opened and Dee and Joe came charging out, seizing Stuart and subduing him, which took far more punches to the face and balls than they’d expected.

  Finally he was down on the ground.

  “Did that just happen?” Joe asked, looking at his machine.

  “That did not just happen,” Dee tried, “We are not saying that happened.”

  A series of police cars came to a sudden halt, lights flashing and sirens blazing. A combination of uniformed officers and detectives jumped out, having been moved from ‘let’s check this place out’ to ‘the cop killer is inside’ by a phone call made shortly before by a certain Dee Nettleship. It had been patched straight through to Maquire, who ordered a total assault on the house before anyone got away.

  Although, in practice, this assault was painless, with the detectives jumping out, finding the door open, and Dee sat on the steps having a crafty fag stolen from Stuart’s pockets. When Joe had protested she didn’t smoke, she said the odd social occasion and every time someone’s threatened me with a gun, with most definitely includes today.

  “Are you okay?” Maquire asked, feeling ninety per cent guilty and ten per cent lust, a very odd combination he wasn’t ready for.

  “Yes, glad you got here quickly, Joe’s got him upstairs.”

  “Big lad is he, Joe?”

  “Not exactly,” and Dee led Maquire upstairs. There Joe was leaning against one wall, a large rucksack leant next to him and a cat in his arms. And in the middle of the room was Stuart Grell, who was rolling around swearing feverishly, covered in blood and tied up with shoelaces. Maquire noted they were Joes shoelaces, and his boots were on very loosely.

  “Shall we kick him downstairs?” Dee asked.

  “I’ve got to caution him, do all the legal stuff. Do you two want to go downstairs and get out of this place?”

  “Can I have my laces back when you’ve cuffed him?”

  “No, actually we’ll need those for the investigation. But I’ll send someone to fetch you new ones.”

  The rest of the afternoon proceeded smoothly: Dee and Joe gave statements, Stuart was taken away, everything was examined, and the police focus was on Stuart’s house. This allowed Dee and Joe to leave, where they parked up at Dee’s and found Pohl and Nazir waiting for them.

  They went inside, got everyone an alcoholic drink, and the new pair were debriefed on the day’s activities.

  “So what happened after you’d got him tied up?” Pohl asked.

  “We spoke to Nathan,” Dee explained, “who was very pleased his brother was going to end up in a prison and targeted by all the other bastards who think they have the moral high ground.”

  “Excellent. Does that mean he told you where the payment was?”

  “Ah.”

  “Ah?” Nazir replied to Dee.

  “There is no payment,” Joe confessed, “Nathan made it up to get us involved.”

  “Fucking ghosts,” Nazir sighed.

  “However,” and Dee leant forward, “there is some good news.”

  “Oh?”

  “He feels that as his business here is concluded, he’s going to be able to leave the house. Which means it’s clear of ghosts.”

  Pohl saw how Dee was grinning. “You’re going to buy it aren’t you.”

  “And at a sweet knocked down price, oh yes. The new trustees of Tompkins’ estate are bound to want to shift it.”

  It took a few weeks, but Dee was able to push through a purchase, and for the price she wanted, having correctly deduced that being the home of a murder and the site of an arrest would do to the price what Grell had done to the police. That was why the four members of the group gathered there one Saturday morning to move both Dee and Pohl in.

  Dee had hired a large van, and over several journeys they packed up, loaded, unloaded and more or less dumped all Dee’s worldly goods in the new house. Pohl, on the other hand, had just bought a car load of selected items and left her flat in Cambridge in mothballs. Well, mothballs which were cleaned once a week by the staff.

  But despite the differences in the size of their possessions, both had a lot of books.

  “Forget charging ghosts,” Joe complained, “we should be charging Dee for carrying all this stuff about.”

  “Just think Joe, it’s giving you muscles.”

  Joe weighed up Nazir’s comment, and decided that might impress Dee, whereas it would actually just impress Nazir.

  “My house is a flirt free zone,” Dee cautioned them, as she carried in a plant pot and was followed by the lads carrying a sofa.

  “Why don’t you have one end of this sofa, what happened to equal rights?” Nazir grinned at her back.

  “Because one of you pig fisted bastards would drop Steve.”

  “Your plant is called Steve?”

  “You bet my plant is called Steve!”

  “Grell’s definitely gone then,” Pohl said as she walked past them.

  “If he hasn’t fucked off he’s being very quiet, the machine’s been running in the lounge all morning. Not a peep.”

  Pohl nodded at Nazir’s comment, then said to Joe “maybe you could develop a detector next, so we know for certain if something is there.”

  “Good idea.” If I had any clue what was happening in that box.

  Detective Constable Maquire sat in his corner of the office looking down at a report. He was perplexed. It wasn’t that Stuart Grell was proving difficult, because he was proving a perfect prisoner: no denial of the crimes, but a willingness to show off and grandstand which netted them all the information they could possibly need to lock him up for years, for life. Dates, methods, details, the whole shebang, and even more importantly he wasn’t shy about informing on the rest of the group. They, however, were a lot more reticent, but things were moving ahead nonetheless and all would soon be before a judge, the result a foregone conclusion.

  No, that wasn’t why Maquire was perplexed. He couldn’t stop thinking abo
ut Dee, and not for the reason his penis was demanding. The issue, the problem, was that Grell had said something odd during his interviews. Okay, he’d said a lot of odd things during his interviews, from listening to God cats to his complete inability to see how his brother hadn’t betrayed him by calling in the police. No, what was odd was how Grell had sat there as a thought burst into his mind, and he told Maquire about a box. A metal box, the sort that could fit into a rucksack, which was channelling the undead and allowing Nathan to speak.

  Nonsense, obviously, and his fleeting thought disappeared, anger at his brother shouting from the afterlife coming back. But Maquire couldn’t dismiss it as easily as he’d done with Dee’s first statement. Because if Maquire looked at Dee’s statement he had to concede she’d been acting in a way which made far more sense if she’d been privy to extra information, the sort which could be provided by a machine which spoke to the dead.

  But that, of course, was impossible. It was merely coincidence Joe le Tissier was carrying round a rucksack large enough, and taking it to a house he had little reason to be in.

  Dee and Pohl had a new home, so of course there had to be a house warming meal. Everyone had arrived early and helped cook, which caused a series of elaborate movements that a ballet would be proud of. But all four got out of the kitchen without being tied in knots, and soon they were tucking into a wonderful four course meal.

  Pohl had something on her mind. “How do you all feel the last few weeks have gone?”

  “How do you mean?” Dee asked.

  “We had our first experience of solving a mystery. We had a ghost, a mission, a moral dilemma, some law breaking and two of us were nearly shot. So, overall, how do you all feel?”

  “I fucking loved it,” Dee said, leaning back and grinning. “This is actual investigating, no dog shows or science labs in sight. Err, present company accepted.”

  “I have to admit,” Joe began, “while we didn’t make any money, I certainly had a more lively time than my lab work.”

  “And you Nazir?”

  “It hit that sweet spot between being shot at by government forces and being bored to tears restarting routers.”