The Secret Dead (London Bones Book 1) (9 page)

16

I sat on the edge of the bath and checked for emails while the tap filled the tub with steaming water. I had a few responses, but nothing of note. I clicked over to BBC News. They were showing the same clip of Ben flying off, along with a photo of Malcolm that looked like it had been culled from his passport. Updates came in every couple of minutes, but it was reaching the point where the reporters were starting to report on each other.

I turned the tap off, then rubbed steam away from the bathroom mirror. The harpy scratch stung like hell where I’d rubbed antiseptic ointment into it, but it looked clean and lacked the raised red lines that indicated infection. I put my phone onto the towel and stepped into the claw-footed tub. I closed my eyes as the water lapped under my chin. A steady frozen draft from the warped window frame froze the top of my head while my lower parts broiled. The heat soaked into my bones. I could see most of them. My ribs stuck out like the back of an immersion heater, and my knees looked like someone had stuck a pair of ice cream scoops onto two rulers. I was doing too much dying. Every time I died, my flesh began decomposing, and every time I came back I threw up. My body was suffering for it. I’m vain enough that I wouldn’t have objected if I looked good, but I didn’t. I just looked sick. I needed to eat more, and die less. It shouldn’t be hard. I liked pizza and ice cream and chocolate, and all those lovely foods that are supposed to make you fat. All I needed to do was stop dying long enough for it to stick to the sides.

The only dying I was contractually obligated to do was for the police, who only asked every few weeks. The problem was that every time someone asked me to freelance, I thought of Sigrid. Every extra bit of cash went into my escape fund. Stanley had been right about one thing. I couldn’t afford to pay rent. Or at least not rent
and
carers. I wasn’t quite sure I could afford a mortgage and carers either, but however I was going to get myself out of this hole, I knew I was going to need a lot more money than I had.

The sound of my sister’s voice drifted under the door. I couldn’t make out the words, but by the shifts in tone and gaps, she was holding another conversation with someone who wasn’t there.

Sweat streamed down the sides of my face, making it itch, and I wiped it with the side of my arm. Stanley made a little cash every now and then, selling the flowers he grew in the greenhouse out back, but he wasn’t willing to share any of his money on something like a carer. He came from a time when people like Sigrid weren’t expected to live very long, and he wasn’t willing to waste good money on someone who didn’t even notice whether she was clean or dirty.

The only solution was to do more dying. I scooped shampoo into my hair and massaged it. The problem scooted round my mind on well-worn grooves.

I scrubbed the dead off my skin with a nail brush, ridding it of all the greasy dead cells and stink until it tingled.

I was just rinsing my hair when I felt the first inkling I was not alone, followed by a low wolf whistle from the end of the bath. The suited ghost from Shafiq’s chip shop was standing on the tiled floor. The dead man had no hormones to trigger any sort of reaction from seeing a naked me in the bath, but life habits die hard, and he was giving me a good ogle anyway. I resisted the urge to cover up.

‘Oy,’ I said. ‘At least have the decency to look at my face.’

‘Nothing but bones on you anyhow.’

‘What do you want?’

‘Found your dead man.’

‘Where?’

‘Putney Vale Cemetery.’ The ghost hopped from one foot to another.

I frowned. ‘What’s with the skippety skip? I’ve died here plenty of times. It’s hallowed ground.’

‘Oh sure, oh sure,’ said the ghost. ‘That’s all that’s needed. Do you know how much hag magic is soaked into this place? It’s like being bitten by rats.’ He shivered. ‘Yeargh.’

I got back to the subject of Malcolm. ‘What about the zombie? Has he lost it?’

‘Uh-uh. Still holding it together,’ the ghost said.

‘And the winged boy?’

‘Not sight nor sausage.’

I reached over the side of the bath to where I’d left my phone on a towel. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Frank Sutton.’

‘I’ll let the guardsman know it’s your choice of film on Saturday. Just give him plenty of time to source it if you’re picking an old one.’

‘Nope. He’s got it. It’s going to be
Grease
all showings.’

Jeez
, I thought,
what is it with ghosts and Olivia Newton-John?
The dead man dissipated into the steamy air. I leaned back into the bath, which was cooling rapidly. Malcolm, but no Ben.

It made what I had to do a little easier. Legally, there was no option. Failure to report the whereabouts of a known zombie was a minimum five-year prison term. Ben wasn’t there to complicate things, but my stomach still hurt a little as I dialled Dunne’s number. Malcolm and I had never got on, but he didn’t deserve the pit. No one deserved it, no matter what they had in their freezer, and it hurt a little that I’d be the one to send him there.

Frank the ghost had said that Malcolm hadn’t lost it. Somehow that made it worse, that when they came for him he’d still know why and what was coming, but I had no other option. If I didn’t, others would die.

I dialled Dunne with a sick feeling in my stomach that for once didn’t come from dying. When he answered, I passed on the information without hesitation. He didn’t ask how I knew, and I didn’t say.

I lay back, closed my eyes again, and tried to relax, but my heart was thumping. When I started grinding my teeth, I gave up, washed up, and got out.

The window frames in the living room were as warped as the one in the bathroom, so even though the heating was up to maximum, I put my pyjamas on, covered them with a dressing gown, and then dragged my duvet to the living room, where I sat cross-legged in front of the TV with the duvet over my head with just my nose and eyes peeping out.

They’d drummed up some talking head on one of the twenty-four hour news channels, a professor from somewhere or other, whose necroambulist knowledge tended to the panic-ridden, which was probably the reason he was on. The interview was interrupted every few minutes by a public information broadcast advising Londoners that the city was in a state of emergency and everyone was required to stay home until further notice. I pressed the mute button, pulled my mobile from the dressing-gown pocket, and pulled up Obe’s number. He would be home and, I hoped, freshly laundered. I ran through scenarios in my head.

Hey, Obe, just sent your oldest friend to the pit.

Hey, Obe, got good news and bad news. Didn’t find Ben, but I did find...

Hey, Obe...

I put the phone back in my pocket like the coward I was. I stared at the TV for hours, but the headlines didn’t change. I fell asleep with bright yellow letters imprinted on my eyeballs: Lockdown.

Slimy bodies shuffled through my dreams, bumping and snuffling in the dark.

17

I was woken by someone banging on the door. Stanley swore from somewhere upstairs. I shuffled, muffle-headed, to the door, my brain still streaming dreams of the dead.

The banging didn’t stop until I drew back the lock and opened the door a crack to see Little’s puffy face. He wore the same suit he’d had on earlier, but it had become a little rumpled. ‘Constable Taxi Cab at your service. Don’t you ever answer your phone?’

My mobile was a weight in my dressing gown pocket. I pulled it out to see it was ten past three. I had eight missed calls, and I remembered I’d put it onto silent.

If they’d found Malcolm, they didn’t need me. Unless they’d also found Ben, and he was also dead. The wrong kind of dead.

‘Have you found them?’

‘Just Brannick. The boy’s still missing. Slender can’t make his mind up whether to lift the lockdown, and he’s too damn cheap to stump for a mini cab for you.’

‘What do you want me for?’

The cat shook his head. ‘Zombie wants to talk to you.’

‘Malcolm? Why?’

‘You’d have to ask him. He won’t say a word to us. And he’s not got long left before he goes bonkers. Dunne wants a confession out of him before he loses it.’

‘Give me a minute. Wait here.’

‘It better be a quick minute.’

When I turned, he followed me in uninvited. He wrinkled his nose. ‘Something really pongs in here.’

‘That would be my mother. You know, death hag. You’re welcome to wait outside.’

‘You still live with your mum? Nice.’ He glanced around at the mess on the floor, ‘Guess neither of you is the tidy type.’

‘Wait here. I won’t be long.’

I headed to my bedroom, dressed quickly in jeans and a black jumper, then checked the contents of my backpack and added spare clothing.

I went downstairs to find Little standing in the hall looking into my sister’s bedroom. I’d left the door closed. Sigrid lay on her back, her hands reaching down towards an area by her waist and up to her mouth in repetitive movements. There’s nothing quite like having to watch someone desperately eat an imaginary sandwich to make you want to give them a real one. I’d have to feed her before I left.

‘What’s wrong with her?’

‘Brain damage.’ I squeezed past him into the room.

‘Liar. Brain damage doesn’t smell like anything, but she’s got a definite whiff of something weird. Dunno what though. Also smells like she’s had an accident.’

I pulled back the bed clothes and checked. He was right. The problem with adult nappies is that firstly they are really expensive, and secondly, they aren’t as effective as they could be. It had leaked.

I began to strip the bedding, including the washable underpad, and dumped it in a plastic tub I kept there for the purpose.

‘Can’t you get your mum to do it? Or’—he sniffed the air—‘the old guy upstairs? You said you’d be a minute.’

Explaining why my mother and Stanley couldn’t help would take longer than just doing it. ‘If you’re not going to wait where I asked you to, you can help. There’s a wheelchair in the kitchen. Bring it through will you?’

Little disappeared out the door, not so much willing to help as not wanting to get involved in the clean-up process.

He wheeled it in through the door the moment I finished pulling a fresh shirt over Sigrid’s head, and at my request helped me wrangle her into the chair. I’d done it alone a thousand times, but she was heavy, and the extra pair of hands made it that much easier.

I wheeled her into the kitchen and asked Little to feed her cereal while I sent Lorraine next door a text message asking her to check in on Stan and Sigrid in the morning.

Finally I locked the door behind me while Little unlocked the car. It had sat cooling while we’d been inside, but the heat was still stifling.

Little buckled his seat belt. ‘Seriously? That’s your life? Dying and cleaning up someone else’s shit?’

‘Pretty much,’ I said, even though it wasn’t. Maybe a big part, but not all. It was also none of his business.

‘And you’re single? No husband or boyfriend?’

‘Hah! I have enough people to look after.’

Little gave me a look I didn’t know how to interpret. ‘I don’t think that’s the way it works. No wonder you’re so ratty.’

‘So, how come you joined the police?’

Little grinned but let the clumsy attempt to change the subject pass. ‘Mostly to annoy my father. As you do. You know.’

I thought of the decomposing woman in the attic. ‘That I do.’

‘It was a decent package. Pension and all. And a car, although I didn’t expect so many rules on when I can use it. You should think about it. You can’t earn much at the Lipscombe. And they’re trying to attract minorities. They like us. We tick boxes.’

‘Hmm.’ Dunne had said as much to me, but I wasn’t interested. I didn’t earn much, but I loved my job and I owed the Lipscombe. I wouldn’t have any job at all if it weren’t for them. Even the thought of extra cash for the escape fund wasn’t tempting enough for me to leave them.

Little had learnt his lesson regarding the blue light, and the wet tarmac flashed azure at intervals as the light revolved. The army trucks had disappeared, but there was still hardly any traffic.

Little glanced at me. ‘You know where we found him?’

So Dunne hadn’t passed on the source of his information. I shook my head.

‘Putney Vale Cemetery. Right in the crematorium.’

My heart skipped a beat. ‘What?’ I whispered.

‘The crematorium. Poor sap. Looks like he was trying to do the honourable thing. Slender pulled him from the coffin himself.’

‘Was he...’

‘Still conscious. Not burned though. Must have just gone in.’

‘Oh my God.’

Little grinned. ‘I know. I do feel sorry for the bloke in charge of the furnace though. We’ve got him down the station. He keeps making excuses, but he’s got no chance. You’re not allowed to burn people who are still capable of screaming, no matter how nicely they ask.’ He glanced over at me. ‘Hey, are you all right? Your heart is racing.’

It was. It felt like it was going to burst out of a chest suddenly too tight.

‘I knew him,’ I muttered. ‘The thought of him burning alive is just a bit much.’

Someone less self-absorbed than the cat might have picked up on the lie, but Little just made what he probably thought was a sympathetic noise and mercifully fell silent.

I laid my head against the headrest and took a deep breath. It had never occurred to me Malcolm might try to do the right thing.