3. Cash in Your Chips
three
Cash in Your Chips
Four Days Before I Die
From my super sleuthing, I have already uncovered the following pieces of information on Imogen Savona.
She was born on the 4th of August 1960 as Jean Johnson, to parents Kent and Queenie Johnson.
Attended stage school in London from the ages of four to fifteen, then left to star in a number of theatre productions and low?budget, mostly horror movies.
Her big break came in ’84 when she took the lead role in The Last Bus to Hornblotten Green.
After that she wrote and starred in the mega?successful and long-running series Peggy in the Middle with her childhood friend Lucy Lutney.
In 1990, Imogen purchased a run?down hotel on the south-west coast of Cornwall in a little township named Helzephron. This apparently translates as Hell’s cliff. Not at all ominous, and I can probably take a stab at where her story ends.
Under Imogen’s management, the once struggling grand Victorian guest house was given a new lease of life and brought bang up to the twentieth century.
A spa was built, a Michelin?starred chef appointed, and The Paragon went on to win several hospitality awards.
The actress visited often, staying on site, greeting guests like old friends and taking nightly walks with her dogs, until one blustery day in 1995 she simply vanished.
She never checked out of the premises, and never returned to her London home.
A missing persons investigation was launched, but it went dormant after two years due to insufficient leads, and after seven, a declaration of presumed death was granted.
She had no living spouse and no kids of her own, so her entire estate, including the townhouse in Chelsea and the Cornish mega-hotel was left to her cousins and their children, and that’s where it starts to get blurry.
Google has been less than forthcoming with the identities of Imogen’s relatives, and the census records haven’t been as helpful as I’d hoped they would.
The Paragon is still up and running, though its reputation has been somewhat tarnished over the years. The disappearance of the hotel’s famous owner seems to have opened the floodgates on negative press.
But Imogen’s mystery wasn’t the first, and since the mid-’80s, there have been no fewer than seven sudden, uninvestigated deaths and new missing persons cases. One newspaper had dubbed the hotel “a suicide hotspot” and had attributed all the tragedies to trend followers.
It seems like lazy reporting to me. Either that, or a cover up, but it’s concerning that it keeps happening there.
The latest victim was thirty-six?year?old French Belgian Camille Ciel, who apparently died by suicide, yet the official death certificate cites a “broken neck” as the cause of death.
Who takes their life by breaking their own neck? Is that even possible?
Something isn’t adding up, but I can’t seem to find any evidence tying the other mysteries to the hotel’s former owner.
The only name that seems to crop up time and time again in connection with Imogen Savona and The Paragon Hotel is Gerald Pickett. He runs what—if I’m reading this correctly—might be a paranormal exorcising company. The ExorSquad.
I won’t lie, it all sounds shady as fuck.
There’s barely any publicly available info on the business.
No Companies House entry, no tax records, and little to no social media presence.
The postal address listed takes me to some sketchy London back alley, and ExorSquad’s website itself belongs in a museum.
It’s wildly out of date. We’re talking cornea-smiting blocks of biro-blue text on textured white backgrounds, clip art, pointlessly animated pointers, and numerous error 404 broken links.
There is one link, however, that works when I click it, and I’m not even sure the general public should have unpassworded access to it, but here we are.
It’s a list of all open ghost?fighting “cases” within the company.
It’s long. Ridiculously long. And none of them seem to be in any order. There’s a number and a short description of each case.
Haunting 439: Ardruin Castle.
Haunting 362: Grimthorne Manor.
Haunting 434: Plot 47 (Bowen’s Farm).
Haunting 389: Gravely Stables.
Haunting 442: SoulCycle Spin Studio.
Haunting 500: The Last Resort B&B.
Haunting 412: Lynch Hostel.
It feels like I’m scrolling forever before the name jumps out at me.
Haunting 401: The Paragon Hotel.
Number of ghosts: At least six and a half.
Location: The Paragon Hotel, Cornwall.
History: Built in 1899 and opened its doors to guests in 1900, The Paragon is said to be Cornwall’s most haunted building and home to a long spate of mysterious deaths and disappearances, including famous local actress, Imogen Savona.
Wanted: Figure out what’s causing the deaths and stop it.
Status: Agent sent, progress halted, paused indefinitely.
Okay, what the fuck?
Not that I believe in this nonsense, but how can there be half a ghost?
Six and a half ghosts. And which half are we talking about, the top or the bottom?
Or perhaps the person had been split horizontally.
Maybe it’s the spirit of whoever got roped into testing out Goldfinger’s laser cutter prototype.
Stop it, Gary.
It seems that the Paragon case has been listed on ExorSquad’s to-do list for over eighteen months yet has not been completed.
My brain cogs are warming up. Machinery clunking into place.
On another website, one of those pay?per?click sensationalist tabloid?style news outlets, I find what appears to be an old, probably out of date, job advert.
WANTED: Spirit Extraction Specialists. No experience necessary. Full training provided. Competitive salary. Travel opportunities. Immediate start. Don’t delay, ring ExorSquad today!
And what a coincidence that I also happen to need a new job. I understand that the whole outfit was most likely built on exploiting people’s desperation and grief, but two birds, one stone and all that. I dial the accompanying 020 London number.
The phone rings and rings. I’m milliseconds away from hanging up when . . .
“Thank you for ringing the ExorSquad, where all your hauntings go to die. Gerald speaking,” a raspy, tobacco?ravaged voice says. It takes me a few seconds to realise the sounds belong to a human and not an answering machine.
“Oh hi, yeah, um . . . my name is Gary Runcorn, I’m calling in response to your job advertisement . . .”
“Ah, brilliant, brilliant . . . Gary Runcorn you say?” I hear a pen scratching over paper.
“Yes.”
“How old are you, Gary Runcorn?”
“Thirty-nine.”
“Do you believe in ghosts?” he asks.
I suppose the question makes sense, it is a paranormal exorcising company after all. However, I choose to be honest. “No.”
But how difficult can the job be? I’ve seen ghost hunting programmes. All they do is mooch around a Victorian manor with an MP3 recorder and an ornamental aerial wand and relay “messages” from the beyond.
“You will do.” Gerald hums to himself, and I’m relieved that my scepticism isn’t an immediate deal breaker. The pen scratches again. “And would you say you have a strong back?”
“Huh?”
“Your back, Gary Runcorn. At thirty-nine years of age, is it giving you any problems yet, or does it still contain at least some vigour of youth?”
What the actual fuck? “Um . . . the second thing, I guess.” I may have other underlying issues but a bad back definitely isn’t one of them.
“Excellent, yes, very well. Tell me, do you have personal health insurance? And if so, how extensive is the coverage? How would you rate it from one to five?”
There’s a warning siren sounding from the deepest recesses of my brain. It’s saying, “Hang up the phone Gary. Run the fuck away.” But that would leave me no closer to figuring out what happened to Imogen Savona.
So I lie. “It’s very good. Five out of five.”
“Superb!” Gerald yells. “When can you come in for training?”
“Oh, uh . . . just like that?” I had expected a little more back and forth. An interview perhaps.
“Yep, just like that. We’re always desperate for fresh blood here at ExorSquad.”
Warning! Warning! Run, run, run.
“Pardon?”
“I said . . .” He clears his throat. “It’s always lovely to make the acquaintance of a new team member.”
Uh, no. You didn’t.
I don’t say this, though, because I need to find out more about Imogen and this thirty?year?long missing persons case, and getting a pay cheque whilst conducting the investigation is the cherry on the cake. It’s too tempting to pass over.
“I’m about to get fired, so I can start any time.”
There’s a muffled sound, as though Gerald’s holding his hand over the phone’s mic, then he yells, “Ted! Teddy boy! When’s the next induction day? . . . Friday? . . . Did you say Friday?” He speaks to me. “Gary Runcorn, are you still there?”
“Yes.” I wonder if Gerald may perhaps be losing his marbles.
“Top stuff! Would you like to come in Friday for training? I’ll have my secretary—”
“Personal assistant!” someone in the background yells.
“I’ll have my personal assistant email you the address.”
“Is it above the Doughlicious pizza place?” I ask, looking at the “street view” photos on Google Earth.
A shopfront with sun?bleached stock images of pizza slices placed in the windows, an LED sign—OPEN with a faulty N—hangs by the door, and the H&S hygiene certificate is partially obscured by a mound of shredded black bin bags, though I’m willing to wager the eatery boasts half a star out of five, if that.
A rat the size of a King Charles Spaniel sits atop Mount Rubbishmore, surveying its kingdom, and is that .
. . someone urinating against the side of the building?
“Yes, that’s the place,” Gerald says brightly. “Shall we say a nine o’clock arrival?”
“Um . . .”
“Fantastic.” He doesn’t wait for my response. “Did you have any questions for me, Gary Runcorn?”
I minimise the image on my desktop to save my sanity. “Actually, I did. What can you tell me about The Paragon Hotel in Helzephron?”