The Secret Dead (London Bones Book 1) (4 page)

7

It was another hour before Dunne beckoned to me from the remains of Malcolm’s front door. I surfaced from my thoughts to find the crowds had gone and only a few police remained to guard the street. I mounted the steps and entered with some trepidation, but only Lego crunched under my boot. There were no gnawed limbs or chewed craniums. No blood or suspicious stains either.

The front door opened directly onto a small living room consisting of a sofa covered in a patchwork throw, two matching armchairs, a coffee table with a storage box of toys under it, and a large flat screen TV. A stack of some of the meaner gossip magazines sat neatly on the end of the coffee table, the top cover pointing out celebrity cellulite by ringing the offending bits in bright red. A pine tree, streaked with silver and gold tinsel, stood in the far corner. The chimney had been bricked in and painted over, but the mantel remained, and I recognised Malcolm’s long service award at the end of a line of framed family photos.

The place hadn’t been tidy before the NRTs had come in—too many toys for that—but now everything was covered in a fine dusting of white powder, and muddy boot prints covered the white carpet.

I reached inside for that part of me that sensed the dead, and the house filled with decaying bodies, one close enough to touch. I reached to the right and pushed the curtain aside only to see a dead fly on the window sill.

If there were any body parts in the house, they weren’t in here. But then only foolish zombies leave their evidence in sight of the front door where the gas man can see it.

I sniffed the air and picked up the twin smells of pine needles and fried onions, along with a sharper underlying antiseptic scent—bleach. It might not mean anything. Maybe they’d just cleaned the toilet.

Detective Inspector Zee Haddad appeared in the doorway leading to the rest of the house. ‘Forensics are done in here. We can use it. Have you got a minute, Vivia?’

Dunne’s boss was a werebee and one of the few senior officers to be open about her nature. Things had gotten better for the metanatural in the police over the last decade, but with the exception of people hired directly for their abilities, like the sniffers, most kept their non-humanity strictly under wraps. Open prejudice might not have been acceptable any more, but that didn’t mean it was gone. Haddad was the tiniest woman I knew, short and round and impossibly quick for someone with such short little legs. She lived in a hive in West London that I’d always been curious about, but the bees were notoriously private and my curiosity remained unsated.

She sat on the sofa, pulled a leather-backed notebook from her handbag, and uncapped a pen. ‘Sit, Vivia. Please.’

Despite Haddad’s casual manner, I nodded and sat with care, my brain not on red alert, but at least on pale yellow. Senior police officers never sit you down at the beginning of an investigation just because they’re feeling chatty.

Little slumped into one of the armchairs opposite, one leg flung over the armrest. It gave out a puff of white dust. He adjusted his seat, then pulled a stuffed lion from underneath him and dropped it casually on the floor beside the chair.

Haddad watched him with calm eyes. She said nothing, but I knew the moment I was gone, he was going to get a bollocking on the correct way to behave in a victim’s home. Dunne gave me a sympathetic smile, then disappeared through the doorway to the rest of the house.

I liked the bee woman, but she reminded me a little of one of the scarier teachers I’d had at primary school. Zee Haddad looked nothing like Mrs Norman, but they had the same penetrating eyes. Every time Haddad opened her mouth I expected to hear, ‘You better tell me the truth, young lady. Did you actually do any studying for this test or were you just being lazy?’

I blinked away the memory of the scary Mrs Norman and told myself not to be an idiot.

Haddad gave me a smile. ‘I wanted to ask you about Malcolm Brannick. I understand you worked together.’

‘Yes, he was press officer. You may have spoken to him on the phone a few times,’

‘No, I don’t think so. I only really know you.’ Her eyes drifted to the photos on the mantle. ‘When’s the last time you saw Mr Brannick?’

I gave her a brief description of Malcolm’s last day at work, the little he was actually there.

Haddad nodded and made a note. ‘When you saw him, did you notice anything unusual? A stiff way of walking? Too much aftershave?’

Malcolm always wore too much aftershave. ‘He wasn’t dead. I know a dead body when I see it, even if it’s still walking.’

Haddad’s shoulders relaxed visibly. Other people might have missed a dead man walking, but not me. ‘Of course you would. It was just a standard question.’ Malcolm couldn’t have been dead more than six days, and that would make her job much easier and likely less distressing.

‘What about infection?’ she said. ‘Brannick’s not on the Register. His wife’s not on it either. Are you are aware of any... contact with carriers?’

Contact. Ha!
A delicate way to put it. If Malcolm wasn’t bitten, then he’d had the dormant version and reanimated after he died of other causes. He wasn’t on the Register, which ruled out in vitro transmission. That left only one way he could have become infected—via STD.

‘Malcolm is...
was
a real tomcat. Or at least he thought he was.’ I shrugged. ‘But I don’t know any carriers he might have been involved with. The only one I’m aware of that he even knows is Patricia Stull. She comes into the office now and then, but Malcolm can’t stand her. Always calls...
called
her “that stinky old baggage.”’

Haddad nodded. She knew Patricia Stull. Everyone did. She scribbled something in her notebook, and I pitied whichever poor constable got landed with the job of trying to piece together Malcolm’s sexual history.

Haddad’s eyes flickered to the family photos above the mantel. ‘What about Malcolm’s son? You didn’t think it worth mentioning the zombie had a son who could fly before they scarpered?’ The question I’d been dreading.

‘I didn’t know he was here. He wasn’t supposed to be. He always goes home to his mum on Boxing Day.’

‘Where’s home?’

Little said, ‘St Kilda. All the winged people live on St Kilda.’

Haddad shot him a look. ‘I wasn’t asking you.’ Little didn’t seem to notice.

Should’ve got a dog.
‘He’s right. Ben lives on St Kilda. He comes down once a year to spend time with his dad, but he was supposed to be home by now.’

‘Any idea where they went?’

‘No.’

She gave me that Mrs Norman look again. I was telling the truth, but something about that look made me feel guilty.

‘And what can you tell me about Malcolm’s family?’

I met her eyes, confused. ‘I don’t really know them, but you’ve got them. I saw Jillie and Finn go into the van.’

She didn’t roll her eyes, but her expression indicated she really wanted to. ‘Not them. Other family. Zombies tend to run to family when they’re in trouble. Do you know where Malcolm’s parents are? If he has any siblings? We can find out, of course, but the sooner the better.’

I relaxed slightly. ‘He has one brother, Neil. Their parents died when they were young. I don’t think they’re close though. He’s probably closer to our legal advisor at the Lipscombe, Obediah Miller. They were all in foster care together. I’m not sure about anyone else. Malcolm and I worked together, but we weren’t friends.’

‘Someone said he was married before. Was that the winged boy’s mother?’

‘No, Malcolm’s first wife died in a car accident years ago. Ben’s the result of an affair. His mother is in St Kilda. I don’t think she’s left there in years.’

‘All right, then.’ Haddad snapped her notebook shut then stood. ‘In that case, it’s time to find out if your colleague ate anyone. We haven’t found any body parts yet, but as you know, that might just mean he ate the lot.’ She pointed at the dust-covered sofa. ‘The Scene of Crime Officers are done in here. Stay in this room. We’re still doing a final sweep of the rest of the house.’

I nodded and lifted my backpack off my shoulder. I rummaged until I found a cheap plastic coverall and a hairnet. I wasn’t usually gone long enough for my body to get all oozy, but I found it was better to be prepared.

‘You don’t mind if I watch, do you?’ Little asked.

I glanced at Haddad. She shrugged and said, ‘Not at all.’

I pulled out a piece of folded plastic sheeting and draped it over the sofa. Haddad might have said it was fine, but I’d learnt the hard way that the Scene of Crime lot didn’t like people dying all over their crime scene. I shook out a plastic-lined paper bag, then put it on top of the magazines.

‘You okay if I don’t wait?’ Haddad asked. ‘I’ll be in and out though.’

I was pleased to hear it. I woke once with a black marker moustache and rings round my eyes. My body was vulnerable while I was dead. I didn’t like anyone fiddling with it. Haddad wouldn’t have much patience with such shenanigans.

I nodded and pulled out a small plastic container filled with a brown watery liquid. I screwed the top off, then dipped my finger in and smeared the liquid onto my bottom lip.

Little’s nose wrinkled, and his bottom lip curled. ‘Urine?’

‘No. Maybe. Probably. It’s river water.’

‘How does that help?’

I glanced at him. The smirk had gone. The cat was genuinely interested.

‘It’s for grounding. I don’t need it, but it helps. The underworld is big. No, huge. Ginormous. And it’s not grounded in time or space. Everywhere and everyone that is and will ever be is there.’ I screwed the cap back on the vial. ‘Everyone makes a fuss about blood in magic. Blood is important, but blood is mostly water. Water’s ultimately what supports life. A lot of things about the underworld are a myth.’

‘Like the three-headed dog,’ Little said.

‘No, he’s real.’

‘What about Hades?’

‘He’s real too. More of a gangster than a god and not as powerful as he used to be.
Anyway
, the River Styx is real, and it’s linked to every bit of running water on earth. Water from the Thames grounds me to London, to this place. I don’t need it, but I find it makes it easier to find the door back.’

I reached up to my neck and felt for the key I kept on a chain around my neck. It was there, skin-warmed and solid under my fingers. I sunk into the sofa and made myself comfortable, letting my body relax completely. I closed my eyes.

Little said, ‘You smell different.’ He sounded surprised.

I nodded without opening my eyes and began the process of journeying to the underworld.

My body shutting down was an odd feeling. It wasn’t painful, but it was unpleasant—kind of like when being drunk and knowing you’re lying still but your body still feels like it’s too heavy and sinking into the bed while the world spins around.

Fortunately, it didn’t take long. I was dead within a minute.

8

I scrambled to my feet before the sofa could disappear. The underworld mirrored the living one, but no one would mistake the two unless they’d taken a vast amount of mind-altering drugs.

There was no one in sight—no dead person to anchor the place to a particular time. The room shimmered, and the colour of the walls flickered from white to blue to stripy green wallpaper. There was the briefest hint of trees, and then they were gone again. The furniture shifted, changed, blinked out and in again.

Souls moved around, but the newly murdered tended to hang about for at least a week at the kill site before they got over the trauma enough to move away. If anyone had died at Malcolm’s hands, it hadn’t been in this room.

I listened. I’d made the mistake the previous year of racing through the house to get the job done before my body decomposed enough to make going back really uncomfortable and had run into a ghost zombie. The house had been a nest of four rotters, but none of us realised there had been five originally. The creatures had turned on one of their fellows and consumed him completely when their intended live victim escaped.

That zombie thought he was still in the living world, and he tried to take a bite out of me. I still woke up in a cold sweat sometimes over the close call.

I lifted my fingers to my neck and felt the reassuring twist of chain and the key against my skin. It’s said you can’t take it with you when you die. That’s not true. You can take the stuff that’s important. Grave goods have been part of the human funeral experience for millennia, and for good reason. It’s the instinct that makes you put your Nan’s engagement ring in with her, along with her favourite photo of your Granddad. Your head tells you it’s ridiculous, that they’re only going to rot or burn. Your heart knows better. The things that are truly important go along. The only exception is clothing. Most of the dead turn up clothed, even if they had no feelings about that particular shirt or pair of jeans. I don’t know why. My guess? The basic human urge to cover up.

I opened the front door and peered out. The row of terraces flickered, interspersed with forest. When the road was there, it was paved with coffins. The dead blinked in and out as they went about their business. A car drove past, shifting from blue to silver, from Mercedes to Toyota.

Water lapped at the end of the road where the police cordon had been. Beyond, into the horizon, there was nothing but sea. On schedule, a boat the size of the
QE2
slid into sight. My vision wobbled as the underworld adjusted space to make the enormous ship fit on the suburban street. The recently dead crowded the railings, pointing and taking photos. The boatman stood at the front, a giant wheel beneath his slim fingers. I waved, and he tipped his hat.

In many ways, the underworld fit traditional expectations. As I said to Little, there was still Hades, the three-headed dog, and the boatman who’d row you across the Styx for a penny.

Except sometimes the Styx was the Thames, or the Mississippi or the Amazon, and the boatman accepted payment in sunflower seeds or cat hair or a favourite memory or whatever the soul happened to think was really important at the time. The boatman’s name was Charon, and he was the only thing that didn’t change. Everything else and everyone else changed, shaped by the changing thoughts of the dead, most of whom didn’t even know they were dead. They kept going as if life had never stopped, populating their little worlds with not-real versions of their family and friends, even going to work day after day, working out their unresolved issues through a death dream until they were ready for whatever came next.

I looked up and saw a few flying figures. All were human. People don’t stop dreaming about flying just because they’re dead. In the distance, I made out the solid form of a minotaur.

Someone tapped me on the shoulder, and I jumped. I turned to see my sister grinning at me. She was completely naked, her skin pale and freckled, her blonde hair plastered to her scalp. Water trickled down her body and pooled at her feet. At least she was human-shaped for once. My sister was one of the few exceptions. She knew she was dead.

‘You came to visit,’ Sigrid said.

‘Actually, I’m working.’

Her face fell. ‘You’re always working. You never come just to visit me.’

‘I know. I’m sorry. I will. I promise.’

‘You always say that.’ Sigrid flickered and disappeared. A short sharp pain dug into my chest. I reached an arm out, but she was gone.

‘It hurts to see you, Siggie,’ I said to the empty space where she’d been. I swallowed and considered going after her, but once again, she would have to wait.

I turned back into the flickering house and took a deep breath, then crossed the room and went through the door at the far end, bypassing the stairs. I found myself in a large kitchen with a sky-lighted extension. At the end of the extension, seated at a farmhouse-style table, was the most obese woman I had ever seen. Ratty hair draped her shoulders and disappeared into folds of flesh. The flickering slowed then stopped, anchored by the woman’s presence.

She was eating, and by the remains of food around her, she had been doing so for some time and would continue to do so for even longer. She took a bite of a sandwich. A piece of cheese fell out and was swallowed by her cleavage. Something about her felt familiar, but I’d never seen her before.

Even so, her obesity wasn’t the most remarkable thing about her. A small green snake with a soft blurry look—a projection of her consciousness—was wrapped around her neck. It was an odd shape, more of a ribbon than a tube. The tip of its tail curled above her left ear, and its head was hidden somewhere in her cleavage. I looked closer. No, not hidden. Its mouth was clamped to her nipple—breastfeeding.

The serpent raised its head and said, ‘What are you looking at?’

I raised both my hands in a ‘nope, nothing’ gesture. I didn’t know what had happened to the fat woman, but she clearly hadn’t been eaten by zombies—not enough blood. She picked up a jug of water and gulped it down.

I began to back out the room, but something slammed into my back and knocked me down onto the tiled floor. It raced towards the fat woman.

I pulled myself to my feet to see a dead girl on a yellow bicycle. She raced around and around the kitchen, up the walls, over the ceiling and down again, through the table, and around and around again. Her legs pumped so fast they were a blur. The fat woman ignored her.

A slit in the cyclist’s neck reached from one end of her throat to the other, and blood flowed from it, dripping to the floor. She was in her early teens, round faced, and round bodied in a Lycra cycling outfit that accentuated every bulge. She wore no helmet, and her brown hair was tied back into a tight pony tail. There was a square piece of paper fastened to her shirt with safety pins. My eyes crossed as I tried to read it as she whizzed around.

I felt the wind on my face and smelt her sweat when she zoomed past me. I turned to see her racing frantically up and down the stairs before she disappeared into a door at the top of the landing. I followed.

Photographs of Malcolm’s family lined the stairs. Older paintings flickered in and out of view: a ship on a rough sea, stern-faced Victorians, some crocheted wall hangings of cats.

At the top of the landing, I went left into what appeared to be Malcolm’s bedroom. The wood-framed bed was messy and unmade, a white shirt and pair of socks tangled in the sheets. A pile of magazines and a coffee mug with milk scum sat on a dusty bedside table next to it.

The girl raced around Malcolm’s bedroom, faster and faster. The bicycle clipped the edge of the bed and disappeared from view before blinking back.

‘Hello,’ I said.

She nodded as she went past.

‘Can I ask you some questions?’

The girl gave me a polite little shake of the head and a smile, as if I were a stranger who’d stopped her on the street to ask for money, then raced out.

The room blurred, and a blue-cushioned headboard replaced the wooden frame of Malcolm’s bed. The plain white paint on the walls changed to mottled wallpaper. A dead man lay in the bed, a cup of tea at his elbow and a Dick Francis novel in his hands. The woman in curlers next to him was another not-real projection, although her snoring was loud enough. The dead man paused, lay down the book and dug a finger into his not-real wife’s ribs. The not-real woman coughed and rolled over. They were much too relaxed to have been zombie fodder. My guess was previous owner of the house, but I made a mental note of their descriptions anyway.

I crossed the landing and into the second, smaller bedroom, which was more unstable. Mostly it was a young child’s room, but it alternated: a study, an older child’s bedroom, then a double mattress on the floor lit only by a single flickering gaslight and accompanied by the stench of damp.

The young cyclist didn’t notice the changes. I’m not sure she noticed anything other than the walls. She cycled up one, over the hanging bare light, and down the other side.

I stayed in the doorway.

‘I’m Vivia Brisk.’

The cyclist smiled politely. ‘Berenice.’

‘And your surname?’

Her face darkened with suspicion. ‘Why do you want to know?’

‘So I can fill in the form.’ The attention span of the newly dead is shorter than a politician’s promise. It’s not worth bothering with detailed explanations. I’m lucky if they can follow a sentence to its end.

‘Oh. It’s Nazarak. N-A-Z-A-R-A-K.’

‘Date of birth?’

She answered, but I didn’t hear because of the wings. A thousand wings all flapping at once. The room darkened as misshapen bodies blocked the moonlit window.

Some of the dead are angry, most are confused, but this wasn’t the dead. There were other things here.

Feathers squashed up against the glass, followed by a very human-looking face—a harpy. The normally docile creature bared its teeth at me and hissed. Others crowded round it, looking just about as unfriendly as the first.

‘What’s got you in such a flap?’ I said out loud, not really expecting an answer. They might have had human faces, but I’d never heard one speak.

Berenice paid them no attention. She cycled down the room once more, then headed back down the stairs.

The harpies screamed as one, a high-pitched squeal that made me clap my hands to my ears. The first one I’d seen began to headbutt the window. It cracked. Blood trickled down its forehead, but it didn’t seem to notice. Fury filled the brown eyes staring into mine. It headbutted the window again. The others jostled and fought beside it to get in.

I reached out and ran my hand over the bedroom door, but it didn’t feel right.

I sped down the stairs. There was no door between the kitchen and the living room. The back door in the kitchen flickered. Cheap wood, then metal. It wasn’t right either. Leaving the underworld is not as easy as getting in.

Glass crashed as the harpies broke through the windows and flooded the kitchen. A hand-sized shard of glass flew through the fat woman’s head. She took another bite of her sandwich.

One of the creatures landed on the table, its human face thick with dirt except for the white tear tracks down its cheeks. It bared its teeth at me.

I ran out the kitchen and raced to the front door. Talons grabbed my hair from behind, and a line of heat hit my face as its claws tore my cheek. It screamed again. I scrabbled at my neck for my key, pulling it so hard I broke the chain.

I pushed the key into Malcolm’s front door, and it changed to cheap hardboard, painted with red-brown varnish and covered in children’s stickers, a single cat flap at the bottom.

My door.

I twisted the key in the lock and shoved open the door back to the world of the living.