The Dead Speak Ill Of The Living (The Dead Speak Paranormal Mysteries Book 1) (22 page)

  
“Detective, can we try and arrange your new tasks so they don’t interfere with
my booty calls,” Nazir said as he came in very late.

  
“I see you’ve embraced Western Culture,” Maquire replied smiling.

  
“I’ve certainly embraced, yes.”

  
“So if I may get serious on you. I have a case that’s very urgent, and we need
your help.”

  
“Shoot.”

  
Maquire sighed instead of speaking, then began “someone has been attacking
people. Two women and a man so far, so not your average misogynist. Each person
has gone missing for forty eight hours, wakes on their own and can remember
nothing of what happened.”

  
“Are they drugged?” Joe asked.

  
“Correct, we found a cocktail in their systems and injection marks on them. But
these weren’t recreational, they were forced onto the victims.”

  
“Do you know a lot about date rape drugs?” Dee smirked at Joe.

  
“Only the ones you used on me.”

  
“So abduction,” Pohl got things back on track, “do you know what happened in
that time?”

  
“No. Nothing, except for the major problem that each victim had both their
eyeballs removed.”

  
“Eyeballs? You mean scooped out?”

  
“Yes Nazir, neater than scooped, but removed. The victim is otherwise unharmed,
alive, but irrecoverably blind and severely psychologically scarred.”

  
“So what do you know?”

  
“We have no motive beyond being an eye collecting nutcase, we have no prints,
we have very little indeed. There’s no connection between the victims. In
short, we’re at the point you’re called in. And we need to act, because this
person will strike again.”

  
“Fuck…” was all Joe could say.

  
“Well I’m glad you didn’t bring around any photos this time,” Pohl commented,
shivering over the last lot.

  
“I’d like to start tonight, if that’s okay?”

  
“Hang on,” and Dee has realized something, “none of the victims are dead. Who
are we going to talk to?”

  
“I want to make sure the place where each victim woke up isn’t being haunted by
something we can question.”

  
“Oh, yes, that does make sense.”

  
“Certainly worth a try,” Joe confirmed.

  
“Good. Then let’s go.”

  
“Dessert?” Pohl said looking worried.

  
“Let’s have it when we get back,” Dee said, “Chocolate doesn’t go off.”

  
“Unless you burn it.”

  
“I’m going to fix your water myself so you can fuck off.”

  
“Is this a park?” Dee asked as they pulled up. She knew it was a park, it was
pretty obvious given the large expanse of grass, trees and there was even a
lake in the distance. But she wasn’t sure someone would pick a park to dump the
comatose body of a…whatever the name for this victim was.

  
“Yes, a passerby found the woman screaming, and I can’t blame her for crying
out. She’d been wandering around for a while.”

  
“Right, let’s get some answers before it rains.”

  
They walked with as much nonchalance as you can have into a park when it was
night.

  
“Actually,” Pohl asked, “why is this open at night? Isn’t it dangerous?”

  
“We advise women to avoid it. But too many people cut through for it to be
closed. The problem of a town growing up round it.”

  
“Good thing she didn’t trip over a duck,” Nazir said, looking at the lake.

  
“You’re all heart.”

  
“Ducks are bastards. They operate on sea and on land. Sneaky bastards.”

  
“We’re here,” Maquire announced, so Joe put the machine on the rucksack on the
ground and turned it on.

  
“Is anybody here?” he asked, and they waited.

  
And waited.

  
“Anyone at all? In the park? Anywhere?”

  
“Arse,” Maquire complained. “You think there’d be someone here.”

  
“Looks like it’s empty.”

  
Maquire stood back up and sighed. “It was always going to be a longshot, and
we’ve got two more locations to check. Maybe we’ll have better luck next time.”

  
Joe was packing the machine away. “It’s a shame we can’t recruit ghosts to be
spies for us. Send them off to watch things?”

  
Maquire nodded. “That sort of surveillance would be helpful, would save
officers. Can ghosts move about at will?”

  
“We don’t know. They seem to be mostly stuck where they are until whatever
changes and they can leave. But some do follow their bodies. Some could
probably move where they wanted.”

  
“Hmm,” and Maquire kept talking to Joe, “what you need is a load of funding and
a proper research project in this, not hiding away.”

  
“Tell me about it.”

  
“I take it you’re making notes on everything you do?”

  
“Will that be a problem?”

  
“No, just don’t leave them on the bus or anything. And you’re no closer to
handing it over to third party scrutiny?”

  
Joe didn’t have to yelp “No!” because putting a hand protectively on the
rucksack was enough.

  
“Just a question Joe, just a question. Questions are good in my line of work.”

  
“They’ll break it.”

  
“I guess they probably would.”

  
“Is he out?” Bear asked, as he crouched next to Stride’s desk, although such
was the bulk of the man he didn’t so much count as crouching as placing an
immoveable object.

  
“Yeah, he’s out, why?”

  
“I’ve had an idea, come with me,” and Bear moved across the office. Stride
followed as bid, but took his coffee with him.

  
The room wasn’t huge, and they soon came to a halt. “Isn’t this Maquire’s
desk?” Stride asked, knowing full well it was but wanting to introduce the
subject.

  
“Yes, yes it is isn’t it? And we’re working late, and there’s hardly any other
detectives in the building, so…”

  
“Ah, we’re going to look at his computer aren’t we?”

  
“Oh yes we are.” Bear squeezed himself into Maquire’s normal sized chair.

  
“You’ll crush that and he’ll know.”

  
“But no complaints about looking?”

  
“Do you really think he’d have written down what he’s up to?”

  
“He might have made some sort of note somewhere.”

  
“So you’re going to be using his computer all night looking?”

  
“Yes, yes I am.”

  
“In that case I’ll keep the coffee flowing and the door shut.”

  
The night progressed much as the pair envisaged, with Bear poking through the
internal recesses of Maquire’s files, a process which was technically breaking
at least four rules in the detective handbook, and Stride hovering. And then…

  
“Got something!”

  
“Don’t shout, they’d have heard that in the cells.”

   “Okay,
here we go. He’s been working with a group of private investigators.”

  
“He’s gone civilian? How are they better than us?”

  
“You didn’t let me finish, which I will now. A team of four investigators, of
which is Joe le Tissier.”

  
“I’ve heard of him.”

  
“You’re thinking of the footballer.”

  
“Shit, yeah. So he’s a genius then is he this le Tissier?”

  
“No. No, but he’s got a machine that’s a genius.”

  
“A what?”

  
“There are multiple references in this to “Joe’s machine.””

  
“What the fuck does that mean? Has he got some sort of super computer?”

  
“Right, Stride, sit down.”

 
“What?”

  
“Sit down.”

  
“Okay…”

  
“Are you ready for this.”

  
“Maquire will be back if you don’t stop fannying about.”

  
“He says the machine talks to ghosts.”

  
“Talks…ghosts, the white sheet things?”

  
“Yes. Ghosts of dead people.”

  
“My God he’s gone insane. We have a nutter leading us, is that how he does it,
he’s insane and he can think like a mentalist?”

  
“This isn’t Dexter. Or Hannibal. And I don’t think he’s insane.”

  
“Well there aren’t ghosts. If there were ghosts we’d see aliens or dinosaurs or
whatever.”

  
“Stride, think about it. Maquire solves every murder thrown at him, and they’re
now throwing them all at him. And he’s writing about a machine that talks to
the best witness of all. The dead.”

  
“Jesus, you think this is real.”

  
“Yes, yes I do. And I’m pleased it is.”

  
“Why? This is Harry Potter or some shit.”

  
“He was a wizard, what, I have kids. Anyway, if Maquire is relying on a
machine, great, because we can take the machine and we’ll use it and he won’t.”

  
Stride’s eyes widened. “I don’t know whether I’m offended you want to steal
something or how great that is.”

  
“Stride my old mate, we are going to be legends.”

  
The plan had been for Maquire to take the team to a second site, and see if
that had any watching hosts. However, he had received a phone call, bid goodbye
to the group, and driven straight to a hospital at high speeds. Maquire didn’t
like hospitals one bit, and not just because every visit brought a case with
more pain and misery. He’d broken a leg as a child and they’d kept him in
overnight, and he still woke, even years later, to find himself in a cold sweat
dreaming about that stay on a ward. He understood why people were spooked by
hospitals, and didn’t wish to end up back there himself under any
circumstances.

  
Which was unfortunate, as his job had a habit of reminding him in the strongest
possible terms about this fear.

  
Maquire parked up, went inside and showed some ID, so he was soon being ushered
through casualty and into a small cubicle. There was a bed here, and on it lay
a young man. He was in a hospital gown, lying down on a bed but not under the
sheets, and there was a mixture of white materials covering the top half of his
head, where his eyes would have been.

  
“Hello, I’m Detective Constable Maquire,” he said, and the man turned his head
in the direction of the sound. “Are you ready to answer some questions?”

  
“Yes…” came a weak voice, “yes.”

  
“Good. Do you remember anything about what’s happened to you?”

  
“I… I was walking, out walking, then… then I woke up. And my eyes…” His voice
trailed off into anguish, and Maquire nodded. Just like the others, the poor
bastard had no idea, which didn’t help the investigation one bit. Maquire
presumed the medical report would list the same cocktail of drugs, and there
had been no luck chasing up where someone could get them from, although his
team had started looking at hospital staff records to see if anything stood
out.

  
This whole thing was a mess and it wasn’t getting better.

  
“Wait,” Maquire said, as he refocused on the man, who was pulling the white
layers off his face.

  
“You need to see what they’ve done, you need to see…”

  
“Nurse!”

  
But the man had done it, and the detective was looking into two bloody holes,
the dried dark red matter all that remained of the eyes. Maquire felt sick, and
put a hand on the bed to steady himself. It was all he could do not to swear.

  
“Find them…find them please…”

  
“Yes, yes of course, I will do everything in my power.”

  
“I need this to work,” Maquire said as he rang Dee and gave her the location
they’d be visiting. It was morning now, and the detective had barely slept,
seeing those two recesses every time he closed his eyes, and most of the time
they were open. In fact he’d had to avoid breakfast, because he felt nauseous,
and was even feeling a once in a lifetime repulsion to coffee. All he’d done
was sip water.

  
He parked up and went over to Dee’s car, which had arrived before him, and
peered in.

  
“Just the two of you this morning?” he said when he realised just Dee and Joe
were inside.

  
“Yes, sorry, Nazir and Pohl have prior appointments.”

  
“But not together?”

  
“No, not together.”

  
“Yeah, that would have been weird.” Still, thought Maquire, the two essential
people were here. Although it only needed Joe to turn the machine on, so why
was Dee essential? “What we’ve got here is the site of the latest attack. Well,
where they were found, but you know what I mean.”