Ghostcatcher

by Sophie Green

  She handed Lil a fresh tea towel. ‘I’ve often wondered if maybe you thought it was Abe?’

  ‘You would have told me if it was him.’

  ‘If your dad had still been around, whoever he was, I would have told you. If there had been any chance of you getting to know him …’ Naomi’s fingers went to her lips. ‘You didn’t think he just didn’t want to know you?’

  Lil shrugged. ‘I didn’t know what to think. I didn’t have much to go on, so …’

  Naomi looked down. ‘I’m sorry. I’ve mishandled it and now …’

  Lil squeezed her hand. ‘I just wanted to know, so I didn’t have to spend all my time wondering about it, that’s all.’

  They carried Waldo’s cage over to the sideboard where it could be reassembled and then put down a layer of fresh newspaper and stuffed in a handful of the shredded Heralds for a good-sized nest. When it was done Lil took the lid off the shoebox and Waldo breathed the free air while she picked him up in her cupped hand and stroked him on the head. The hamster clutched at her thumb knuckle with his tiny paws and stared at his home. His nose twitched.

  Waldo didn’t like being held, so reluctantly Lil put him back in the cage. He looked suspiciously at the new layout and then did a couple of circuits to check on his belongings; he stoically accepted that his tangled nest of food and bedding were all gone. Instead there was a new, unfamiliar smelling clump of paper with no food in it. With an air of exasperation he pulled apart the scrunched nest that Lil had created, sombrely accepted the thin carrot stick she offered him and stashed it in his new pad and then he took his frustration out on the wheel.

  ‘So,’ said Naomi, as they watched Waldo scampering as fast as he could. ‘How are you getting on at the Klaxon? Do you like working with Quake?’

  ‘I like Quake but I’ll be glad when Ghostcatcher throws in their cards so I can get on a proper news story.’

  Naomi raised an intrigued eyebrow. ‘You really think they’ll give up before they catch it?’

  Another sick feeling swelled in Lil’s belly. ‘Don’t you?’

  ‘I don’t think they will stop any time soon.’ Naomi shrugged matter-of-factly. ‘There’s too much at stake; as long as Sam Tangiers can keep the public’s interest on the Final Ghost then no one is looking at City Hall and all the other things it should be doing to clean up the city. It’s a fantastic distraction.’

  Lil tried to keep the rush of panic out of her voice. ‘But they can’t just keep on, can they? Not for ever?’

  Naomi gave her a sympathic arm-squeeze. ‘I know it’s tough. Tracking a story like this is playing the long game and sometimes it can seem like it will never end but you have to hang in there. If you want to be around when something happens, you have to be around all the time. That’s just how it works. Ask Abe – the P.I. business is mostly watching and waiting.’

  The sick feeling welled up in Lil’s throat, tightening it like a thick scarf.

  ‘I –’ she began. ‘I can’t explain it. I just don’t think it’s right to hunt someone down. If they haven’t done anything wrong, then people should leave them alone.’

  Naomi shrugged. ‘But this isn’t a person, Lil; it’s a ghost – or at least it’s the idea of a ghost.’

  ‘You don’t believe in any of it, do you?’ Lil glanced sideways at her mother.

  ‘No,’ Naomi admitted. ‘I don’t buy the ghost story. I prefer to concentrate on things involving real people with real problems not make-believe spooks. That’s the stuff of campfire stories and graveyards; it’s not real life.’

  Lil was glad that Nedly wasn’t around to hear that, but then a small starburst of an idea lit up in her mind. If everyone thought like her mother did, then Ghostcatcher would have to be disbanded, and then maybe Nedly would be free again, maybe he would be safe. And if anyone was going to write a story about the non-existence of the Final Ghost, it would be Naomi Potkin.

  ‘Maybe you’re right,’ Lil said cautiously. ‘Maybe there is no Final Ghost.’

  Naomi did a double take. ‘I thought you were keeping an open mind?’

  Lil chewed on the inside of her lip and hardened her face into a frown. ‘I don’t know what I believe any more.’

  Outside, in the yard, Nedly looked in at them through the window, his eyes dark and sorrowful. Then he turned from the warm, inviting glow of number ten Angel Lane and walked away.

  Chapter 10

  The Golden Loop

  From a distance the Golden Loop casinos looked like a heap of gold and jewels nestled amidst the mud of a murky seabed. On closer inspection it revealed the glitter was just paint and neon lighting that glowed up into the smog. Nevertheless the sparkling centre sucked all the life out of the rest of Peligan City, like a gigantic money-eating tick crouched at the heart of the metropolis.

  Nedly hung back at the end of a darkened alley and waited until his eyes had adjusted to the bright lights.

  All the casinos had themes and the doormen dressed accordingly. At the Wheel of Fortune, close to where Nedly was standing, they were dressed as Roman centurions with gold lamé armour over faux satin minidresses, and shivered in the cold night air. The doormen were officially there to welcome patrons out of the rain and into the majesty of the casino floors, but they were built like security guards, with wide shoulders and fists like mallets. They were paid to throw people out when their money was gone, and to keep them away from the management when the house took it all, which it always did, in the end.

  Above the door a six-metre-high roulette wheel turned slowly, its many bulbs flashing on and off. In front was a fountain lit so it looked like it was flowing with molten gold, but as Nedly passed it he saw that the water was brownish-green and had churned itself into scum.

  At the entrance a purple carpet led up over some shallow steps and between two pillars. Nedly stepped through the ornate plaster mouldings and into the huge room beyond. It was packed from wall to wall with a labyrinth of slot machines.

  Every one was occupied by a person feeding in a coin at a time, but these machines were always hungry, no matter how much they ate.

  Nedly moved quickly, skirting along the wall, head down, shoulders in, trying not to give anyone the creeps. The music was fast-paced and upbeat, and the faces of the people at the machines were haunted more by the idea of luck than by Nedly. A couple shivered as he passed but nothing more. He looked up to the roulette tables where the high rollers were gathered in evening suits and sequinned dresses.

  The house always wins? Well, not tonight, he thought. He saw a woman with long dark hair pulled back tightly in a low bun and dark shadows under her eyes. Her navy blue quilted jacket was torn at the elbow and her black tights had a hole in them.

  Nedly watched her put coin after coin into the machine, yank down the metal arm and watch the three wheels spin, hoping for a line-up of identical symbols in a row. As the pile in her left hand grew smaller the effort she put into pulling the lever grew greater.

  So people thought the Final Ghost was a menace? Nedly knew that there were things he could do to help and prove himself, that there were ways he could try to turn things round. He took a breath, steeled himself and then quickly crept up to the back of the slot machine, and sank inside it. The mechanics of the device were lit up by the flashing buttons on the player’s side, the three wheels spinning and clattering round like beads in a jar as they lined up one pineapple, two pineapples – and a watermelon. Nedly saw the player’s face fall and her right hand go back to her left for another coin, but it was empty. It was now or never. Nedly gritted his teeth and pointed as hard as he could, until energy struck and lit his finger like a match head.

  The watermelon began to very slowly click backwards. The player was patting down her pockets when a cold breath whispered across her skin and she looked up. Her face went slack. Another click and the watermelon was clearly in retreat. The player watched it, frowning, goose pimples blooming across her skin. She glanced quickly over her shoulder to see if anyo
ne had noticed that the machine had malfunctioned. The top of the winning third pineapple dawned in the window.

  Nedly could almost hear her heart beating; she kept looking away as though she wanted to run, but her eyes were drawn back to the windows as the third wheel nudged backwards and finally clicked into place. Three in a row. She held her breath; Nedly held his. There was a moment where time itself seemed to stand still and then in a torrent of electronic noise the machine started gushing coins, a waterfall of money dropping from the mouth of the machine and piling onto the floor until the machine was empty. The woman blinked, then, as she came to her senses, dropped to her knees and began scooping the coins into a pouch she made by holding on to the hem of her skirt.

  From the back of the machine, Nedly beamed at her.

  The sound of a big pay-out drew an instant crowd. Nedly turned to make an exit but people had gathered behind the machine, on all sides of it, craning their necks to see, jostling to get into the space where rogue coins might have rolled so they could lay their feet on them, and so he kept very still among the cogs and wires.

  A figure in a black velvet tux with an amethyst-encrusted wreath around his grey curls began to descend the stairs from the high-roller tables. Two centurions joined him. The man in the tux whispered something to them and one peeled off towards the lobby while the other accompanied him across the floor.

  ‘Psst! Hey!’ Nedly tried to call out to the player, but of course she couldn’t hear him. The crowd had jostled closer, penning them both in. She tried to stagger to her feet, cradling her winnings to stop the skirt material from splitting.

  The man in the tux caught up with her. ‘Congratulations, my dear, congratulations!’ He took hold of her wrist firmly and raised it in the air in triumph, and a shower of coins rained out of her skirt. ‘Who says these machines don’t pay out? You’ve all seen it here with your own eyes!’ He gave the centurion a meaningful look and he took hold of her other elbow. More coins fell to the floor. ‘What’s your name, my dear?’

  ‘Ariman,’ she whispered. Her eyes were darting now; her smile was wary.

  ‘Carrie Ann!’ he bellowed. ‘Give her a big hand, everyone.’ The room erupted into envious applause. ‘Now then, let’s take you out to the bank, get these heavy coins changed into crisp notes – what do you say to that, everyone?’ He slammed her hard on the back and she dropped more coins.

  ‘Then we can help you out to your car.’

  ‘I don’t have a car,’ she protested. The second centurion took the owner’s place at her side and between him and his fellow security guard they lifted her off her feet and propelled her towards the back room.

  ‘Looks like luck was on her side!’ the man in the tux yelled. ‘Next time it could be on yours!’ He bared his teeth in a blindingly white grin, stretched out his arms, fingers wide as though he owned the room and everyone in it and then he made his exit, clapping heartily as he backed away.

  The crowd cheered and surged round the machines and Nedly was stranded.

  A wiry young man with his arm in plaster approached. He stared at the three wheels stuck on pineapples and Nedly stared back at him. The man’s expression grew peaky.

  A woman at the next machine along said, ‘You’re wasting your time: it’s empty now. Didn’t you see?’

  But the man continued to stare, mesmerised. ‘There’s something weird about this one.’ Nedly slunk back as carefully as he could. ‘In fact,’ the man said slowly, ‘this whole place feels kind of … creepy.’

  Nedly froze.

  A woman in the row behind shuddered suddenly. ‘Now that you mention it …’ The colour drained out of her face. ‘You don’t think –?’

  Nedly sank down to the floor and started crawling on his knees, backwards along the corridor of slots, trying to find the exit like a mouse caught in a maze, while around him panic had started to spread.

  Someone did a blood-curdling scream, making Nedly jump. The lights started flickering and the crowd surged towards the entrance way, shoving each other and then shrieking when they mistook sharp elbows for the touch of a spectral hand.

  A loud beaky voice suddenly cut through the noise. One by one the machines fell quiet as everyone turned to look the same way. Nedly clambered to his feet and followed their gaze to the figures in white hazmat suits with reflective orange visors striding up the purple carpet. There was a beat, a pause of silence and then panic broke out. The crowd split into those trying to leave and those trying to hide. The high rollers fled the tables, pouring down the stairs and into the lobby.

  Ghostcatcher cut through the crowd like a harpoon through water. When they reached the end of the carpet they unhooked their laser consoles and activated them.

  Nedly watched, paralysed with terror, unable to make his legs do anything until he saw the green light blinking, and then he ran. Up to the high-roller room, straight through baize blackjack tables and roulette wheels, through sequined dresses and shiny tuxedos, through screams and sweat and chip counters and wall after wall, through storage rooms filled with barrels, dark rooms with low-hanging lights and men in crumpled suits where smoke hung in the air, through carports and an alleyway, a warehouse, a subway.

  Scene after scene streamed past in a blur of shadows and all the time he could feel the heat of the green blinking light behind him, right at his heels, snapping hungrily, while in his mind’s eye he tried to fix on Lil. Pushing everything else aside he focused as hard as he could on where she was at that moment. Then, with no more than a pop and a crackle in the air, Nedly Stubbs vanished.

  Chapter 11

  Undercover Baker

  The next day the Herald ran the story.

  No dice for the Final Ghost

  The fearless scientists of Ghostcatcher Inc. treated customers to a spectacular light show downtown last night in a close encounter with the Final Ghost.

  The ghost was trying to get its hands on Peligan City’s riches at the jewel in the crown of the Golden Loop: the Wheel of Fortune!

  Casino owner Ray Jepetto said, ‘Our patrons work hard, night and day at the slots, and this spook thinks it can walk into my joint and frighten them out of their winnings.’

  The Final Ghost, who had earlier caused a slot machine to malfunction as well as creeping out casino guests, soon fled when Ghostcatcher unleashed their powerful laser net.

  A witness from the Wheel of Fortune Security Team told the Herald, ‘I dare the spook to show its face in the Loop again. If I get one iota of a hunch it’s back, I’m going to crush it into a ball, dip it in concrete and throw it in the river, so to speak.’

  Sounds good to us!

  Sheltering in the recessed double doorway at the back of Binky’s Bagels, a boutique bakery on the edge of the plaza, Lil screwed the damp newspaper up into a ball and threw it angrily into a nearby bin.

  She shook her head at Nedly. ‘That could have been it, you know? The. End.’

  Nedly curled his shoulders in and shuddered. ‘For a moment I thought it was.’

  ‘You’ve got to be smarter than that. You’re supposed to be lying low.’

  ‘I just wanted to do something good. I thought if I did then maybe people would think differently about me. I know it backfired but …’ He ran out of words to explain with.

  Lil looked across at him, all stooped and miserable, leaning into the doorway as though he hoped it could swallow him up. She couldn’t knock him for trying. ‘Forget about it,’ she said. ‘It was a fine idea. It’s just, we ought to stick together – so I can watch your back. We have to be careful.’

  ‘You mean I have to be careful.’ Nedly rustled up a half-hearted grin. ‘All right.’ He turned to face Lil with his back to the wall. ‘What are we doing here?’

  Lil pulled out a pencil and started chewing on it. ‘The way I see it we can’t stay on the defensive. Ghostcatcher are getting too fast for us. We need to pull the plug on the whole enterprise and the neatest fix I can think of is to convince Gordian to stop funding them, r
ight?’

  ‘Right,’ Nedly said, nodding.

  ‘As it stands Ghostcatcher is costing the city big, but no one is even questioning it because they’re all so scared of the so-called Final Ghost. Why?’ She twiddled her pencil impressively between three fingers and then answered her own question. ‘Because of that.’ She pointed towards the bin.

  Nedly started nodding and then paused uncertainly. ‘The bin?’

  ‘The casino story in the Herald,’ Lil explained. ‘As long as Sam Tangiers is stoking up the fear, people will think that getting the Final Ghost out of Peligan City is money well spent, so if the whole thing died down, then …’ She raised her eyebrows. ‘If the story goes away, then so does the funding.’

  ‘So, you’re going to stop the story?’

  Lil attempted to conjure a steely look into her eyes. ‘That’s right. I’m going right to the top. Me and Sam Tangiers are going to have this out, reporter to reporter. I’m going to explain how he’s got it all wrong about the Final Ghost.’

  Nedly’s eyes lit up. ‘You’re going to tell him that I’m one of the good guys?’

  Lil glanced away. ‘I’m probably going to have to play it by ear.’

  ‘How are we going to get to him?’

  ‘I’ve got a plan.’ She turned to the doors, took hold of the handle and hesitated. When she turned back her expression was grave. ‘You should sit this one out, somewhere safe,’ she added.

  Nedly’s cheeks turned grey and his eyes darkened. ‘I thought we were sticking together.’

  Lil winced. ‘We are. It’s just … I was hoping you would be the lookout – in case any trouble comes my way.’

  ‘O–K.’

  ‘Great.’ Lil started to tuck her hair behind her ears but then fluffed it out again quickly when she realised they were probably luminous red. ‘Keep your eyes and ears open and, Nedly, whatever happens, just keep a low profile.’