7. Death Is but the Next Great Adventure #3
Stove waves her off. “And we know that it’s almost impossible to kill a fleshie if you’re undead. Believe me, I’ve tried. It would take a powerful entity to snuff someone out. I can barely move a felt-tip.”
There are so many unanswered questions popping into my head that I’m having a hard time prioritising them.
Pixie opens her mouth to argue with Stove, but I hold up a finger. “Sorry to interrupt . . .” And I genuinely am. I’m very intrigued to hear what she has to say, but I just need a few things neatened up first. “We can’t move stuff?”
To illustrate my point, Peter marches over to the smashed?up bed and walks straight through all the detritus until he’s standing directly in the centre of my dead body. “We can’t touch anything, can’t pick anything up, can’t move jack shit.”
“Not strictly true,” Trystan says, and my heart leaps at the excuse to stare at him for a few seconds. “We can move things.” He puts a lot of emphasis on the word can, like he’s adding hidden Ts and Cs. “We just have to be really fired up to do it.”
“We can only move stuff if our emotions are . . . amplified,” Pixie adds. And as much as I’m starting to like the American rock star, my eyes are bereft at leaving Trystan’s face.
Her words trigger an idea in me. “Wouldn’t murdering a person provide you with enough emotional amplification to, you know . . . finish the job?”
“I mean, in theory,” she concedes. “But . . . okay, so if I’m moving stuff, it’s usually incidental. It’s because I’ve gotten mad mad, or elated, or . . . I’m fucking.”
Josh looks up from his vintage ghost device, raises an eyebrow, and immediately goes back to the screen.
Gary Runcorn, do not think about spectral sex. Just don’t do it, mate. At least not right now.
I clear my throat to give myself a few more seconds to gain composure. “So, we’re either looking for an emotionally unstable ghost, a really powerful one, or a living person?”
Everyone nods. No one is in disagreement with me. Good, that should actually help narrow down my list of perps.
“If I can’t interview suspects and inspect evidence and police docs, it might take me longer to figure out who killed Imogen—uh, Jeanie, but I reckon we can all find a way around it.”
Piecing together these kinds of puzzles was what I lived for when I . . . lived. Take that away from me and what do I have? Drawing dicks in condensation?
“Excellent. Oh, bravo, you,” Jeanie says, cupping my tricep again. “And yes, we’d love to help.”
I ineffectively try to step out of her touch.
“I’ll start by figuring out what happened to you, Jeanie.
Since you’re the reason I was called here in the first place, and then I guess if I’m not whisked away to the ‘afterlife’ or the ‘beyond’ or whatever the next place after death is, I’ll work through each of your mysterious deaths.
” I still can’t look directly at Trystan, but the thought of his unencumbered attention while he answers my questions about dying sends a thrill up my spine.
“We are . . . mostly . . . of one mind in thinking it’s the same person or entity that killed us all,” Jeanie says. “Including you, Gary.”
I finger comb my moustache as I think. “So, I’ll be solving my own murder at the same time.”
It wasn’t a question, but the ghosts answer me regardless.
“Yup.” Trystan.
“Mmhmm.” Jeanie.
“Yessir.” Pixie.
“I still reckon there’s more than one killer,” Stove adds, and Peter shrugs noncommittally.
Only Josh doesn’t weigh in. Eventually, under everyone’s scrutiny, he heaves his shoulders up. “Well, duh.”
“Okay.” I nod. “Okay.” And for the first time since dying, I feel a tiny ray of excitement.
“Jesus! Fucking Norah, what have we got ’ere?” A deep male voice calls from the doorway.
Peter jumps out of my corpse, as two newcomers enter the room.
An older white man wearing a pressed white shirt and grey suit trousers, and a twenty-something woman of East Asian heritage in full police constable regalia step into the suite.
Neither acknowledge any of the ghosts, and both head straight towards my cold, lifeless body.
“That’s Sergeant Dave Davies,” Peter says, hovering behind the man. “A bigger bellend you’ll never meet.”
“If you’re looking for your crim,” Stove says, pulling up to Dave’s other side. “Here he is.”
“We don’t know that for sure,” Jeanie says in a motherly “what have I told you about jumping to conclusions” kind of way.
“Well, that’s what old Gazza’s here to prove, no?” Stove says.
I wince at the nickname, but I guess he’s not wrong.
“Jazz,” Sergeant Davis says, unable to take his eyes off my mangled corpse.
“Call the station, let them know it’ll be longer than we originally said.
And call Angel, tell him to collect his tax again.
” Davies straightens his spine and puffs out a long, exasperated gust of air.
His eyes travel up to the ceiling, to the uncracked ceiling rose and back down to my body, and he whispers to himself, “Bloody hell, I’m gonna miss snooker tonight, aren’t I? ”