The Dead Speak Ill Of The Living (The Dead Speak Paranormal Mysteries Book 1) (24 page)

  
“Let’s not drug him into a stupor yet,” Maquire cautioned, “we need him
conscious to help.”

  
“He’s not conscious now,” Nazir observed.

  
“Yes, aright. Okay, tell me the details, I can get people started on this.”

  
“Two men. One tall, thin, with ginger hair. Pale skin wearing a suit. The other
was like a human gorilla, a bear of a man, with a beard to match. Also in a
suit.”

  
Maquire paused, his pen halted on the page. It couldn’t be. “A bear of a man
with a ginger rake?”

  
“Yes.”

  
“Worn suits, as if someone desperately needed style upgrade?”

  
“Yes!”

  
“Was there the faint smell of strong male deodorant in the house?”

  
“Still is.”

  
“Bloody hell.”

  
“What is it?” Nazir asked, seeing the look on Maquire’s face.

  
“I think I know who it is.”

  
“Who?”

  
“I think it’s two people I work with.”

  
“Police?”

  
“Right,” and Maquire stood. “Before I ring this in I have an address to visit.
You all stay…”

  
“We’re not staying,” and Nazir seemed stridently resistant. “We have to do all
we can to get her back.”

  
“Alright, but if you come there must be absolutely, positively no stabbing of
anyone.”

  
“That wasn’t…”

  
“We agree.”

  
They did, so they came out of their house. Maquire hopped in his car, and
everyone else hopped in Nazir’s and he followed closely behind.

The
woman now finished the eye and kept chewing, so Dee kept up a nervous
conversation.

  
“This is like that reality show where they put people who are barely
celebrities in a jungle and feed them kangaroo anus, only with more nutcases.”

  
“But I am so much more classy” the collector said after swallowing the last of
the eyeball.

  
“They’ve never killed anyone!”

  
“I haven’t killed anyone!” and she sounded hurt. “You and your detectives
cannot point to one person who I’ve killed. I am neat and precise and no one
has any memory of me removing the eyes.”

  
“Hang on, you remove them when they’re awake?”

  
“Oh yes.”

  
“Oh Jesus.”

  
“So tell me, tell me Miss Police Associate, who I’ve killed.”

  
“I can’t believe I am having this conversation.”

  
“I’ll take that as a surrender.”

  
“Fair enough. But aren’t you killing me for knowing who you are?”

  
“No my dear, I’m not killing you. I’m just after your oh so beautiful eyes, I
could just disappear in them.”

  
Oh shit, Dee realised, I’m next. I’m actually next. She’s going to cut my eyes
out and leave me drugged up in a field somewhere. And I like my eyes, I like
them very much, in fact I’m really rather be killed than live knowing I can’t
see anymore. But it doesn’t do to start a plea bargain like that.

  
“I suppose all your other victims begged?”

  
“They tend to do that.”

  
“I won’t bother then. I suppose they offered you money and sex and whatever
else they could offer?”

  
“Yes. Some very tempting offers, but I turned them all down.”

  
“Saves me offering anything then. Let’s be honest, is there any way out of this
for me?”

  
“No, none at all.”

  
Dee pondered. Joe would realise she was missing, at some point, so in theory
people were looking. So if she could stall long enough maybe they’d show up.

  
“Don’t you have a grand scheme to tell me about?”

  
“I’m not a Bond Villain! More’s the pity.”

  
“So why eyes. Why do you eat eyes?”

  
“Because they’re wonderful for the body and soul.”

  
“How?”

  
“You must be a scientist, a poet would understand.”

  
“Not even Lord fucking Byron ate eyeballs. So why not sheep’s eyes or
something?”

  
“Why would you settle for less when you can have the absolute best!”

  
“It did me alright with boyfriends.”

  
“I thought you were unmarried, there’s no ring on your finger.”

  
“Oh, right, even here as I’m about to be mutilated someone finds time to moan
about my nuptial status. I’ll have you know there is nothing wrong with
protracted periods alone. Hang on, does this mean you’re married?”

  
“I’m a widower.”

  
“Let me guess, you ate his eyeballs and he killed himself.”

  
“He fell off the roof repairing some shingle.”

  
“And then you went mental.”

  
“I am not insane!”

  
“Let’s just look at the evidence on the wall behind you.”

  
“Humph. I shall return and deal with you shortly.”

  
Soon after the door slammed in anger, leaving Dee alone. The other victims were
missing for forty eight hours. Which doesn’t give me long to find a way out of
here.

  
Stride was sat in Bear’s armchair, with the machine on the desk in front of
him. It was a metal oblong the size of a toolbox, with unlabelled buttons on
the top. None had been pressed yet, and Bear had gone into the kitchen to make
a victory sandwich while Stride took a look and worked out what had to be done.

  
So far, all he’d been able to conclude was that the manufacturer should be
reprimanded for not putting any guidance on it whatsoever. How were you
supposed to tell what it did? Did you have to be psychic to use it? Because if
you were psychic you wouldn’t need a machine to talk to the bloody dead would
you.

  
Oh what the hell, let’s try something. A switch was flicked and Stride sat
there waiting.

  
And waiting.

  
“Is there a ghosty in the house?” he tried. But nothing, which might mean the
machine wasn’t on properly, or might mean there were no ghosts, or any number
of options. Fucking balls, how frequent were ghosts anyway? Did you find a lot
of them? Were they in every house as people had been busy dying for a long
time, or did you have to seek them out?

  
“Any luck?” Bear called out.

  
“No, do you know anywhere definitely haunted where we could test it?”

  
“I can find a list of every murder carried out in the last forty years.”

  
“Very funny. Hey, have you got the back door open there’s a hell of a draft…”
and Stride turned to check the front door was closed. Which it wasn’t, and
standing between it and him was a very angry looking Maquire, and three
civilians behind.

  
Stride stood as Maquire came close up. “So you’ve come to find your secret
weapon,” Stride sneered, not afraid of the balled fist Maquire now stood with.

  
“What the fuck are you doing?”

  
“Did you think we wouldn’t find out? Mr Successful, Mr. Up The Rankings, and
all this time you’ve been cheating.”

  
“It’s not cheating!”

  
“Well it’s not official,” Bear said as he bought his ever intimidating bulk in,
“and at a minimum we can have you done for sharing the case details with those
punters, and that’s before we start on the box. So here’s what I figure, I
figure you give it to us, and we let you have your normal career back.”

  
Bear had, however, badly misjudged the situation, and Maquire walked to within
an inch of the man and shouted “Do you think I care about the fucking box when
you’ve kidnapped my Dee!”

  
Nazir titled his head at the use of words, but left the detective to it.

  
“What?” Bear said, lost.

  
“You kidnap a young woman and expect me to bargain with you?”

  
“Kidnap? What are you talking about?”

  
Stride was beginning to get worried. “We took the box, we stole the box, that’s
it.”

  
“We don’t kidnap people!”

  
Maquire looked into Bear’s eyes, livid, and had a germ of a realisation. Now he
walked over to where Joe was leaning against a wall, and reached a hand up to
delicately touch Joe’s cheek.

  
“Joe, Dee’s been kidnapped?”

  
“Yes…” he slurred.

  
“Where was she kidnapped?”

  
“The restaurant…”

  
“At a restaurant? So not at home?”

  
“A woman took her…”

  
“A wo…” He paused, his hand fell. His paid colleagues noticed.

  
“Why is a woman a problem?” Bear asked, repressing the urge to ask why they
were being blamed at seeing Maquire’s face.

  
“The person stealing eyeballs is a woman. How many woman kidnappers can there
be?”

  
“That is a problem,” Stride confirmed.

  
“Joe, Joe,” Maquire said, “tell me you have a registration number. Something,
anything.”

  
“Yes, the ghosts…” and Joe pulled a piece of paper from his pocket. On it was a
number. Just a number.

  
“That’s not a car registration. What is it?”

  
“Sorry… chatroom….”

  
“Car, Joe, car,” and another piece of paper was pulled from the pocket. This
did have a car’s details.

  
“Right, everyone get in a car, and that includes you two traitors. Let’s get
her back and get this nailed, then we’ll have our reckoning.”

  
Having looked up where the kidnapper’s car was located, the group in their
three vehicles drove round and parked at the end of the street. Then everyone
gathered for a council of war.

  
“How do you want to do this?” Bear asked.

  
“I’m not really in a knock on the door then get a warrant mood,” Maquire
confessed.

  
“I didn’t think you were, so I’ve got a suggestion. Why don’t you have your
civilians go to the front door as a distraction, and we’ll go in the back. Real
subtle like.”

  
“You just want to charge down another door,” Stride noted.

  
“It’s that kind of day, a day to do impossible things.”

  
Maquire sighed. This was going against everything they were trained in, but he
also knew he had to get Dee out of that building before she lost her eyes.
“Fuck it, let’s do that.”

  
Nazir and Pohl went to the front, leaving Joe sat in the car, where they rang
the doorbell and waited. And waited. Meanwhile the detectives crept round the
back, examined the wooden doorway, and barged it open. They found themselves in
a small, immaculately kept kitchen, with a cup of something brown undrunk on a
table.

  
“They’re in,” Stride mouthed, as he walked over to open the closed kitchen
door.

  
As he turned the handle, the door was wrenched open and something hard struck
the constable in the head, causing him to go staggering back.

  
“Ow fuck!” he cried.

  
“You fucking c…” said a female voice, but not the one they were expecting. Bear
just raised an eyebrow as Dee, stood in the doorway with a raised chair leg,
and Maquire, overcome with relief but wholly surprised, looked at each other.

  
“You’re alright,” he forced out.

  
“Just. I managed to get free.”

  
“We’re in time. Where is she?”

  
“The cunt? No idea, I can’t find her anywhere so I can rip her ovaries out
through her withered snatch.”

  
“Charming friends you keep,” Bear observed.

  
“Will one of you fucks help me up?” Stride complained, and they sat him on a
chair. “That really fucking hurts.”

  
“What now?” Bear asked.

  
“You lot have got to come upstairs and see this attic, it’s like something from
a nightmare.”

  
“Right, let’s go check this out, and we’ll let your friends in on the way.”

  
“I am staying here until I can see straight,” Stride confirmed.

  
The enlarged group walked up the stairs, ready to strike if the target
presented itself, and Dee gave them a whirlwind tour of the attic, including
the eyeballs, the drugs, the ties, the instruments and everything else, until
everyone had seen more than they needed.

  
“And you said she ate them?” Bear asked, looking queasy.

  
“Yes, in front of me. I’ll never eat a pickled egg again.”

  
“Did she say why?” Pohl asked.

  
“She tried, but it was all faff and bullshit.”

  
“Sounds like a department meeting,” Bear grinned at Maquire.

  
“I don’t see why you’re happy.”

  
“We just solved the most pressing case in the unit. I assume you won’t be
cutting us out of anything.” He got a glare back for his troubles.