The Dead Speak Ill Of The Living (The Dead Speak Paranormal Mysteries Book 1) (44 page)

  
“Is that a no?”

  
“Damn right.”

  
“Then I’m sorry,” and Maquire just stood, walked back through the house and
left. He looked deeply saddened, but that wasn’t any comfort. Dee stood there,
stunned, mouth open, and Nazir came out, stood by her and put an arm round her.

  
“Ignore him, he can’t make demands like that.”

  
“I really thought this would work,” Dee said, “I really did. We have this weird
shit in common, I thought…” she stopped, determined not to break down.

  
“It’s alright, we’re your friends, let go.”

  
She did. For the first time in years in front of other people she did.

  
“I am standing here, outside the High Court in London, where Ralph Spall has
had his latest appeal turned down. The general public have been protesting all
day, many waving placards calling this expensive process a waste of taxpayers
money, and others demanding that Spall receive the punishment coming to him.
Both will be disappointed.

  
As you know, Ralph Spall killed twenty three men and women between the years of
1984 and 2003, making him one of the UK's most prolific serial killers, until
he was finally caught by police and confessed to all his crimes. His guilt is
not in any doubt, and he says he is the last person to deny what he did.
Indeed, Spall has been mounting a challenge to the British Justice System to
see what, and many others, say would be justice finally done: he demands to be
executed for his crimes.

  
Although the UK is prohibited from using capital punishment by its own laws and
those of the European Union, Spall has demanded to be executed. The courts have
said no, many members of the British public have said yes, and a large
proportion of those found themselves in the unusual position of agreeing with
Spall and wanting what he wants. A great deal of soul searching has taken
place. Spall has even downgraded his demand to be hanged to lethal injection,
although this method is no less controversial in the United States of America.

  
Spall has no higher court to access in Britain, and is believed to be
considering an attempt to force the European Court of Human Rights to allow his
execution. At the same time, the British appears to be attempting to have Spall
deemed insane and moved into psychiatric care and away from legal battles they
are having to pay for.”

  
Ralph Spall pissed into a bucket, as he had done many times over the last few
years. Okay, it technically wasn’t a bucket, but a waste disposal container,
but it was basically a bucket and he had to piss and shit in it. There
certainly wasn’t a bathroom attached to his cell, that tiny room that he could
move around perfectly in with his eyes closed. He did have a television, which
he supposed someone would want to take away, and he had a bed, a chair and a
table, but that was it. None of the luxuries of the outside world beyond the
old cathode ray tube or whatever the fuck they were made from these days.

  
Not that Spall minded. He also didn’t have a cellmate, because he was kept in
strict solitary confinement. The closest he got to other prisoners was through
several layers of wire or secure doorways, and they always shouted what they
were going to do to him. The prison officials were duty bound to stop Spall
being killed by a prisoner in this facility, and the only way to do that was
solitary. And Spall didn’t want to die in here either, because he had something
far grander than being shived to death by a thug.

  
Spall had killed a lot of people, and he was already infamous, a serial killer
than would live long in infamy and all that jazz. People would write books
about him, he’d be a Bathory figure. But there was one final piece of the
puzzle, and that was his death. Not for him old age or a stabbing, he was
determined to be the man who brings executions back, to be the man who demands his
own death, a state murder to match his own. He’d be a legend then.

  
He just had to stay alive long enough to persuade the courts.

  
“I love all night garages,” Dee said as the car pulled up in one. Joe parked up
and began to fill with petrol, while Dee ran over to see what she could buy.

  
“Have you been to many?” Pohl asked bemused.

   “Oh
yes, I used to use them loads as a student, you never know when you need to
dash out on a hunt for supplies.”

  
“Toot toot,” Nazir went.

  
“Indeed,” Dee commented.

 
“Of course they’ve changed since my heyday,” Dee said, making her sound like
she was Pohl’s age.

  
“Ey?” Nazir asked.

  
“The staff are in little bullet proof cocoons now, although I see they’re still
doing their homework in the small hours.”

  
“What, oh, sorry,” the woman inside said as she realised she was being talked
about.

  
“Hi, I’d like some chocolate please,” Nazir said.

  
“What type sir?”

  
“Anything, just give me five quid’s worth of chocolate and I’ll do the rest.”
He grinned, she grinned back, and he realised if he was straight he would have
been exchanging numbers by the time they left. Maybe he should get Joe up h…
no, this was a woman not a stick to be passed around.

  
“What are you studying?” Pohl asked.

  
“Latin,” the woman said, her black face lined with worry.

  
“Oh here we go,” Dee said laughing with tiredness.

  
“What do you mean?”

  
“My name is Professor Pohl of Cambridge University, classics department. And I
can give you a few pointers if you’ve got a minute.”

  
The lady looked round, the forecourt was clearly empty and would be for some
time as it was three thirty in the morning and only the rapists were out
looking for stragglers.

  
“That would be excellent!”

  
“Best give us the chocolate first,” Nazir reminded her.

  
“Make it ten quid’s worth but stick in some cola too, thanks” Dee added.

  
“Have I missed something?” Joe said as he arrived to see two people involved in
a seminar and the other two pigging out.

  
“He was most specific, he wanted to see as high a ranking detective as we could
get to him.”

  
“Before he dies?”

  
“Yes. He isn’t going to make it through the night, and you’re here, so go
straight there and find out what the fucker wants.”

  
Maquire shook his head. Night time drives to dying men, was he in a noir or
something? Still, at least the man hadn’t been brutally murdered, so unless
he’d been doing the brutal murdering what could he have to confess? Definitely
one for the memoir.

   Maquire
was out the door and into his car, pulling up at the hospital twenty minutes
later. He was expecting to fight through NHS tape, but found a young woman
outside who was running up to everyone in a suit.

  
“Are you Maquire?”

  
“Yes, who am I speaking to?”

  
“I’m Susan, the granddaughter, please come this way, he’s not got long left.”

  
Maquire looked at Susan, a tall brunette with bags under her eyes, and realised
he was intruding into a family losing their father and grandfather. Oh please
can this not be something really fucking awful.

  
“What’s it about?” he asked.

 
“Gramps won’t say, will only talk to you.”

  
He felt bad about the memoir thing now, but they were soon at a door and being
shown in.

  
A man lay in the bed, but only notionally, as the many machines and pipes
attached to him seemed to be doing all the work. As the man tilted his head
pain was all over his face, and his eyes widened.

  
“De..tec…tive,” the man said, trying to sit up, until Susan  gently pushed him
down again.

   “Please
be quick,” she said, as the room emptied of people, all of whom looking
accusingly at Maquire, until he was alone with the man.

  
Realising what he had to do, Maquire sat right by the man and leant near his
mouth. For his part the man summoned up the last remaining vestiges of will and
energy, and explained “in 1995…June 5
^th
…1995…I killed a woman…called
Joan Zager.” Normally Maquire would have expected ‘oh for fuck’s sake’ to cross
his mind, but this was getting serious.

  
“Do you have proof?”

   “Look
into it… false alibi… her knickers in my attic… do the right thing.”

  
“Do the r….” but he caught himself from saying it full of indignation and began
scribbling down. There wasn’t much more information forthcoming, as the man
closed his eyes and Maquire dashed over, wrenched the door open and shouted
“quick!”

  
He was declared dead a few minutes later, and Maquire wasn’t sure whether to
slink away or tough it out. He was saved by Susan, who approached him.

  
“I’m sorry,” he began.

  
“Don’t be. He died at peace, whatever he had to tell you, he did it, and he’s
asleep now.”

  
“I…err…” he had no words.

  
“Does Gramps want you to do something?”

  
“Yes. Yes he does.”

  
“Is it bad?”

  
“To be candid Susan, it’s very bad indeed.”

  
“And you think we’ll hate you once this comes out?”

  
“That happens a lot, so yes.”

  
“We won’t. Whatever Gramps gave you, whatever he knew, or did, he wanted
something done. So do it.”

  
Maquire had the feeling this poor young person didn’t know what they were
asking.

  
Dee leapt to her feet and dashed to the door, “pizza’s here!” she called to
reassemble the group. She was showing such energy because it was technically
her who’d left the oven off, leaving them with a cold lasagne and the need for
urgent takeaway food, so she’d tried to turn the experience into something
exciting: the online service gets here quicker than the phone, there’s hot dog
in the crust, she had some barbecue sauce in the cupboard.

  
The others weren’t convinced, but they went along with the plan. Unfortunately,
when Dee pulled the door open it wasn’t a pizza delivery boy.

  
“Hello,” Maquire said, shuffling his feet.

  
“What are you doing here?” she spat.

  
“I see things are still a bit awkward.”

  
“You’ve been inside me and walked away, of course things are a bit fucking
awkward.”

  
“I’ve come about work. Are you still investigating?”

  
“This job you wanted me to quit? Of course I’m still doing it.”

  
“Then we need to talk, I need your team’s help.”

  
“So I can risk myself now you don’t need to worry?”

  
“Please, Dee, this is very serious.”

  
“This better be fucking impressive,” she said, turning and marching into the
lounge and leaving him to close the door. They both found the other three stood
listening.

  
“I guess you heard.”

  
“Ummm, yeah.”

  
“Hello everyone,” Maquire said refusing to meet anyone’s gaze.

  
“Get on with it.”

  
“Alright, this is the situation. On June 5
^th
1995 a woman called Joan
Zager was murdered. I’ve dug her details up, and she was beaten, then strangled
with a belt, before being dumped.”

  
“They have you on cold cases?” Pohl asked.

  
“Not exactly, because late last night I was called to a hospital to hear a man
confess to the murder. He told me to search his attic, and as he informed me
there were a pair of ladies pants tucked away in an envelope. We found them,
and I’m sure DNA testing will match them.”

  
“Doesn’t sound like you need me,” Dee sneered.

  
“Us,” Joe corrected.

  
“Well this is the bad part. Joan’s case was closed years ago, when the serial
killer Ralph Spall confessed to killing her. He’s in prison, he killed a lot of
people, and suddenly he might not have killed Joan after all.”

  
Dee was silent, thinking, Nazir did his out loud. “So Spall lied when he said
he’d killed her?”

  
“He might have done. Which begs the question why, and what else has he lied
about.”

  
Dee had stopped thinking. “So you’re hoping we short the investigation by
getting to Joan’s ghost and asking her.”

  
“Yes, I want to know what I’m potentially dealing with here before everything
goes shit shaped.”

  
“I think we can do that,” Pohl committed, cutting Dee out of the decision
making process.

  
The group hadn’t been drinking – the wine for the lasagne had been left – so
they were able to drive off immediately and pull a night shift. Luckily Maquire
and Dee had separate cars, so Joe rode with the detective and everyone else
rode with Dee, who sat there in bitter silence for the whole trip. Nazir and
Pohl soon gave up trying to talk, and the radio hummed away. Maquire,
meanwhile, found Joe also silent and staring at him accusingly. All in all, it
was an uncomfortable trip.

  
They finally reached the site of the murder, switched their engines off, and
got out. The moon was high, there was natural night, and the air was hot enough
for them to stand without jackets.

  
“Let’s get on with it,” Dee hissed, so Joe put the machine on the seat of the
passenger seat and everyone crowded round.

  
“Is anyone there? Joan, are you there?”

  
“Hi, hi, you can hear me?”