22. Fatal Attraction
twenty-two
Fatal Attraction
“You can see me?” I say. I can’t touch or interact with objects in any way, and yet, I still manage to trip over something. “You can see us and you know who I am?”
Angel grins. “That’s the main reason your ghost is able to be here. From what I understand about spirits, your ‘boundary’ extends to wherever your body is.”
“My body’s here?” I’m not sure why, but I look at Jeanie.
“For now. It’s getting moved soon,” Angel says. He must notice the confusion on my face because he adds, “To the morgue in Truro for forensic examination.”
“Oh.” I’m not sure what I’m more impressed by, Angel’s calmness, his matter-of-fact discussion of my corpse, or that he can fucking see ghosts. “How?”
“Probably in a van,” Jeanie says.
“No.” Shit, not what I meant. “Not how will they transport my body, how is it possible that you can see ghosts?” I ask Angel.
“Ahh, right. Yeah, no idea, son. Been able to since I was a kid,” he replies.
I look at Jeanie, hoping for some embellishment, but she simply smiles and shrugs a single shoulder.
I try a different approach. “So, you’ve been minding my remains?”
“You could say that,” he says.
I want to ask Angel if anyone had been in contact with him about me. My parents specifically. But I already know the answer to that, so I keep my mouth shut and swallow the dullness.
“Jeanie, you knew he could see ghosts.” It’s not a question, but regardless, she doesn’t bite. “Why haven’t you told me?”
“It’s need to know information,” she says. “Most spirits’ boundaries don’t extend this far.”
“Except Peter’s. Is that why you didn’t want him coming today? Does he know Angel—wait, should I call you Angel or Kelsey?” I ask.
“Mr Cobbledick if you please,” Angel says.
“Yes, sorry. Does Peter know Mr Cobbledick can see and speak to ghosts?”
Instead of answering my question, they both burst out laughing.
“Angel’s fine,” Angel says. “Or Kel. You don’t have to call me Mr Cobbledick. Bit of a silly name, innum?”
I’m still unsure if he’s taking the piss, but I reluctantly agree with him. “Well, I guess it is rather unusual.” And I wait for the incoming punchline. It never arrives.
Jeanie speaks instead. “Gary here thinks you murdered all the Paragon ghosts because their deaths bear a striking resemblance to the ones in Peggy in the Middle.”
My jaw’s on the floor. I’m staring at Jeanie, telepathically transplanting my thoughts into her head. You’re not supposed to fucking say that out loud.
“Is that so?” Angel says, turning to me and laughing.
But my response is too slow and gives everything away. “Noooo, I don’t necessarily think it was you. I just think we could be looking at a superfan copycat killer.”
“You reckon I killed you?” he says again, and this time I genuinely might pass out.
“No, no, no. What I’m saying is . . .” Oh, fuck. “It’s a possibility.”
Angel and Jeanie are both laughing, and I have no idea what it is about multiple homicides committed over four decades that’s so funny to them.
“I didn’t kill you,” he says, once his mirth has ebbed. “And I have an alibi for your death.”
“You do?”
Angel looks at Jeanie with an expression I don’t immediately recognise, and then suddenly I understand. With crashing clarity, it hits me. Why Jeanie didn’t tell us about Angel’s gift, why she’s so adamant Angel isn’t the Paragon killer, and where she was the morning I died?
“Oh my god. You’re in a relationship with each other,” I say.
“Well, as much of a relationship as a ghost and a fleshie can be in.” Jeanie slides up to Angel’s side, and he looks at her the way I dream a certain handsome surfer would look at me.
“On the night you were killed,” Angel says, once again looking for permission to continue. It’s given with a subtle nod. “We were here . . . in the back room . . . together. I have CCTV footage to prove it.”
Two thoughts. One, how? How can a ghost be intimate with a living person when we aren’t able to touch anything? And two, as much as I want to close my eyes, stick my fingers in my ears, and “la la la” my way out of this, I can’t. That’s not why I’m here.
I need to get to the bottom of this mystery, and getting squeamish about a spectre and a rugged old dude going hell for leather on each other is not very professional of me.
“I need to see that CCTV,” I say. “Or at least the time stamp from my TOD.”
“Follow me,” Angel says, taking me into a small box room with a tiny desk and an ancient desktop computer.
It takes him a few minutes to pull up the correct clips on his hard drive, and Angel gives Jeanie one last apologetic look.
“Don’t know why you’re looking at me like that. It’s not as if Gary’s gonna see my naked arse on the screen.”
The grainy black and white footage starts at precisely midnight.
Angel enters the premises and switches on the lights.
The camera does that thing where it wastes half a second readjusting the autofocus.
Angel hangs his coat on a hook and shakes the rainwater from his hair.
Then he moves around to the desk, sits behind it, and appears to fiddle with his phone for a bit.
He props it up beside himself and leans back in his chair.
“I’m tuning into your radio show. Imogen told me to,” Angel explains.
“Thank you,” I say, and then I remember the following week’s episode where I list him as one of the prime suspects, and I feel that sense of dread rising again.
We fast-forward through the next two hours. Angel stays firmly rooted to his chair. I can see that very seat if I lean through the wall and look into the main reception area. After this, the undertaker gets up and moves to a different room not covered by the cameras.
“Toilet,” he explains.
A few moments later he reappears and goes into what must be the back room. Here, he fixes his hair, brushes his teeth over the kitchenette sink, and sniff-checks his armpits. Then he takes a seat in a squashy?looking leather armchair, checking his wristwatch every five to ten minutes.
At three a.m. he gets up, lights a few candles that are dotted about the room, turns the big light off, and sits back down. It’s another quarter of an hour before he rises from his chair again. He smiles, lips moving with words I cannot hear.
“Thankfully, there’s no sound,” he says, echoing my exact thoughts. “From here it . . . gets a little pornographic.”
As if on cue, screen Angel pulls his jumper over his head, then he unbuttons his shirt. He’s already undoing his trousers before his shirt hits the ground. And then what follows is a grainy image of a man in his pants making out with thin air.
I kind of want to laugh, except . . . he’s getting more action than I have since, like, forever.
“You can skip this bit,” I say.
“Thank you,” he replies, and fast-forwards the footage while keeping one hand over screen Angel. Through his fingers, I still see glimpses of him, and I appreciate that he’s giving me enough opportunity to compare the time stamp with my TOD.
Eventually, the Angel of two weeks ago tugs on his underpants and pours himself a glass of red wine.
He sits on the leather chair again and begins chatting.
And that’s where he stays, aside from infrequent bathroom breaks, until the sun rises.
He gets dressed, talks to the wall for half a minute, then buries his face in his hands.
In the video viewing room, Jeanie puts her arm over his shoulder, and I swear it actually makes contact. “We’ll be together again for real one day,” she whispers.
Angel silently wipes his eyes.
“Thank you for showing me that. I’m sorry I ever entertained the idea that you killed me,” I say. “But I do need to ask one more thing. Do you have an alibi for all the others? Especially Jeanie.”
“Gary—” Jeanie begins, but Angel cuts her off.
“No, it’s fine. I’d expect nothing less. He needs to be thorough. Just because I didn’t kill him, doesn’t mean I didn’t kill her, right?” Angel asks, looking directly at me.
“Yeah, I guess.”
“When Imogen went missing, I was in Glasgow for a conference.”
“A conference?” I ask.
“Yes. A funeral directors’ conference.”
“That sounds . . . awful.”
Death is fascinating, but grief? Grief is horrible, just the worst. It’s also really boring.
Angel barks out a laugh and shrugs. “It is what it is, I suppose.”
“What about the others? Josh and Trystan and Pixie and Stove and Camille . . . and Peter?” I only tack Peter’s name onto the end because I feel like I ought to be thorough, though I’m certain Peter is the anomaly here.
And not just because the rest were killed after Peggy in the Middle became popular.
“I’m sure I can check back through my diary and let you know if you give me the dates for each one.
” He’s confident in his answer. So confident that my brain’s already searching for other suspects.
“For now, can we keep this video to ourselves? I know it’s a big ask, but I could lose my job for this.
To an outsider, all this footage looks like is that I’m having a big ol’ jolly at my place of work . . .”
“I . . . won’t say anything unless I have to,” I tell him. “But I have one more question?”
“’Course, fire away.”
“How long have you been able to see and speak with ghosts?”
Jeanie laughs. She must have heard this story a few times before.