The Dead Speak Ill Of The Living (The Dead Speak Paranormal Mysteries Book 1) (7 page)

  
“Fluffer!”

  
“What did it say?”

  
“Fluffer, is Fluffer alright?”

  
“Can you calm down a bit and start with hello?” Joe tried.

  
“Sorry, sorry, but my cat Fluffer, is she alright?”

  
They all looked at each other. “We’ll have a look in a minute,” Joe promised.
“But first, some questions.”

  
“Ah. I suppose that’s the machine I’ve been reading about.”

  
“Yes. So how did you read about it?”

  
“I, err, no point pretending anymore.”

  
“There’s no ghost police.”

  
“Right, so, my job isn’t in the recruiting section of the paper. I found my own
way, and that was hacking into places, finding the best material, and selling
it on for a profit. I came down the list to your lab, hacked in, found what
you’d been doing, and sold it on.”

  
“To whom?”

  
“This group of Belgians.”

  
“Belgians?”

  
“Let’s not get racist about Belgians,” Nazir laughed.

  
“Okay, so they wanted my discovery?”

  
“They paid a lot for it. But I realised what I’d found was big. Huge, so I
contacted Miss Nettleship.”

  
“My editor thanks you. But why not something national?”

  
“Err, I read your articles.”

  
“Great, my only fan is dead.”

  
“These Belgians took my brother. But they shot you. Why?”

  
“I don’t know. They came here and shut off a route of enquiry I guess. Took all
my stuff. No links between me and them. If you lot hadn’t got that machine…”

  
“Do you have the details on these Belgians?”

  
“Oh yes, I’ve always had a good memory. Have you got a pen?”

  
“Actually,” Dee confessed, “I’ve been recording this whole chat.”

 
The details were dispensed, and there was an awkward pause.

  
“What happens now?” Stent asked.

  
“We go find Pohl’s brother,” Dee explained, “once we’ve looked for the cat.”

  
“But what do I do?” the ghost asked desperately.

  
“Err… help anyone?” Dee asked. But no one had any answer. What did you do?

  
Feeling more embarrassed and ashamed than they probably should given how much
of a pain Stent had been, the cat was discovered and let out and the group
sloped off.

  
“I guess we do some research on these Belgians then?” Nazir asked.

  
“Yes, but we better get away from this flat. Back to mine?” Dee asked.

  
The drive back was tense, with Nazir working away on the laptop and the other
three making small talk to kill time. When they’d returned to Dee’s house
everyone looked at the small semi-detached property, noted the ragged garden,
and then gone inside where Dee offered them the full contents of her kitchen.

  
“I’ve lager, vodka, gin, red bull, cola…”

  
“Have you got any camomile tea?” Pohl tried.

  
“I have normal tea? And coffee, hot chocolate…”

  
“Do you have the entire contents of Café Red in here?” Nazir said without
looking up.

  
“I like to stay lubricated. And would anyone like a sausage roll as a snack?”

  
Everything was soon served, and the group collapsed into Dee’s living room,
which fortunately had four seats.

  
“Right,” Nazir said with his mouth half full, “I’ve made progress.” Everyone
turned to him, paused, waiting.

  
“The names Stent gave us do exist, and are connected: they all work on the same
research project together. Details are sketchy, but they have their own lab on
a complex in the motherland.”

  
“Just like us. They’re Belgian versions of us.”

  
“Only with firearms,” Pohl added.

  
“Clearly Monroe cut the wrong costs.”

  
“Those hints I can find of their work suggests they’re looking into the
processing power of the brain.”

  
“Good God, they must be quantum biologists too.”

  
Pohl looked at him Joe and asked “you didn’t realise you had rivals?”

  
“No, well, no, it’s not as if funding was free, and they’d never submitted to
the journal.”

  
“How many people did submit to the journal?” Dee laughed.

  
“Let’s not criticise my brother’s work while he’s a prisoner.”

  
“Sorry.”

  
“So are they going back to Belgium?” Joe asked.

  
“The useful thing is, while we don’t know who stormed your lab and caused
destruction, or where Doctor Scott is, the Belgians we do have names for have
been in the UK, and made a group booking on a private flight last night. They
fly out, well, about now.”

  
“To where?” everyone asked at once.

  
“Where do you think?”

  
“Right. Right. R…”

  
“Are you going to keep saying that?” Dee asked Joe.

  
“…so the Doctor is likely on a plane.” He finished.

  
“It flew out of Cambridge.”

  
“So I went in the wrong direction?” Pohl’s voice wobbled.

  
“Don’t worry,” Joe began, “we’ll get him back.”

  
“We will?”

   
Joe turned to Dee. “Of course. We know where he is, he’ll be at that lab. All
we have to do is go and get him.”

  
“Have you thought that through,” Nazir cautioned. “A different country,
different laws and cultures, men and women with guns, maybe this is something
you hand over to the police.”

  
“I think Joe has a point.” Nazir raised an eyebrow to Dee, who continued, “what
do we tell the police? We used a machine to talk to the dead? It would take so
long to prove we could have gone there and back ourselves.”

  
“Well I’m going,” Pohl said and stood, more for effect than any intention to
walk straight out.

  
“I’ll come with you,” Joe said, also stood, and then sat right down again.

  
Dee turned and looked at Nazir. “How about you? We’ll need you.”

  
“Looks like all four of us will be going then. Do you want me to book us some
flights leaving as soon as?”

  
“Yes, please do. So when can we leave? Three of us are local, we can sort our
bags quickly, but what about you Professor?”

  
“Okay Dee, how about this: once you’re all ready, we drive up to my rooms, I
get ready, and then we fly out of Cambridge airport.”

  
“Good but costly,” Nazir reminded them.

  
“I have money to spend on this,” Pohl said. “I’d rather spend mine than receive
my brother’s inheritance.”

  
“A fair point. This sounds like a plan.”

  
Nazir and Joe took their cars back to their homes and packed an emergency bag,
containing clothes, what toiletries custom laws allowed, and for Joe the
machine packed in the middle with everything around. Both had managed to get
back to Dee’s within the hour, to find she’d made sandwiches for the journey as
well as preparing her bag.

  
Soon they were on their way up to Cambridge, and soon they were parked in front
of an ornate and wonderful old building, like something out of a movie. Well,
if you’d never lived in Cambridge before, where upon – to people like Pohl – it
was the standard they’d come to expect.

  
“This is amazing,” Joe said, used to clean white corridors.

  
“Yes, I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else really. Certainly not in those
little brick boxes you three do.”

  
“My little brick box is a damn sight cheaper than this,” Dee returned. “I’d
always think I was in a fairytale.”

  
“In what sense aren’t we at the moment?”

  
“Nicely shot back professor.”

  
The group went up the snaking stairs, and Pohl opened her door and disappeared
inside. She went straight for the toilet, while Joe walked into the lounge and
screamed. Dee and Nazir went straight in, fists balled.

  
“What is it?”

  
“Jesus, Jesus, that scared the shit out of me.”

  
The other two had to admit it was weird. Sat there, on a leather armchair from
the fifties, was what looked like a really badly evolved human being. It took
everyone, not just this group, a few seconds to realise it was a waxwork dummy.

  
“You’ve met Lenin,” came a voice from behind them.

  
“Why the fuck do you have a waxwork of Lenin in your lounge?” Joe asked.

  
“I’ve got three people altogether. Now Lenin’s out of vogue the museum was
selling him off, along with a Joan of Arc people have gone off because of her
dubious breasts…You’re looking at me as if I was a serial killer.”

  
“I think I can see why your children left.” Dee then turned to Joe. “And don’t
think we’ve forgotten you screaming like a girl.”

  
“Just because you’re a woman doesn’t mean you can’t be sexist.”

  
“Pah,” she replied to him.

  
“I’ll have my bag made up soon enough.”

  
“How much exactly does a shit waxwork cost?”

  
“Don’t listen to the nasty journalist Lenin.”

  
“I have a question,” Nazir said, coming and sitting down on a free chair.

  
“I know that tone. That’s the tone of someone with something very serious to
say.” Dee went and sat opposite. Joe didn’t feel like being opposite Lenin, so
stayed standing.

  
“How much paperwork will we need to get to Belgium?”

  
“Err, I bought my passport. Don’t you have a passport?” Dee looked confused.

  
“I have plenty of paperwork which gets me from country to country. It got me
here. But there’s a problem.”

  
“Well it can’t be any weirder than today, so shoot.” Dee was ready for anything.

  
“I’m telling you this in strictest confidence because we’re all in equal shit
at this point, what with the dead bodies we’re not reporting and the stealing
equipment. And here it is: the paperwork is fake. I bought it. I’m technically
an illegal immigrant. No asylum, no permission, came in and set myself up.”

  
“Ah. But still from Syria?” Joe checked.

  
“Very much, fled for the same reasons, still Nazir Tamer. But also definitely
not supposed to be here.”

  
“And you don’t want to risk this paperwork again and again?”

  
“Correct.”

  
Dee leant back, tapping her fingers on the leather. “It’s a private flight from
a smaller airport, to a country most people joke about. And we really, really
need you.”

  
“I know, and I want to come, I do. But I also want you to be ready if I have to
do a runner.”

  
“I think I can sort this,” Joe said, then realised it had been aloud.

  
“Oh?”

  
“I’m going to be sneaking through a machine that I can’t explain. Your Visa is
the least of our worries.”

  
“That’s actually a good point. Maybe Joe should go on his own and the three of
us follow up in case he gets nabbed.”

  
“Thanks Dee, abandoning me already?”

  
“We’ll be literally six feet behind you.”

  
“As long as you don’t end up underneath me.”

  
“Oh I don’t know…” Nazir said winking.

  
“Stop flirting during the counter espionage.”

  
“Okay, so you’re allowed to flirt during the counter espionage. How was I
supposed to know we’d meet a gay security guard who likes things
international?”

  
Getting on the plane had proved surprisingly easy, and getting off had proved,
well, no one had actually got off in the way Nazir was thinking, but they
probably could have done if they’d been staying for a while. As it was they’d
collected their hire car, squeezed in, vowed to hire a larger model if they
ever did this again, and driven through the night to the location of the lab.

  
No one was planning on sleeping, this was going to be a straight rescue
operation and then they could nap. It wasn’t as if anyone was anything less
than adrenalized anyway.

  
“I feel like I could dance for the next ten hours,” Dee bemoaned as she drove.

  
“We’ll be sure to take in a club on the return journey,” and Nazir turned to
Pohl, “do you dance?”

  
“I was trained in ballroom as an eligible girl.”

  
“That’s basically the same thing as Dee then?”

  
“Why is no one interested in my dancing?” Everyone looked at Joe, and the
contempt for his groove was clear in all their faces. “Fine.” He looked back
out of the window.

  
“Any idea how far we are?”