Ghostcatcher Read online

  The Final Ghost

  The silver Mercury Coupe sped away through the city with Marsha Quake behind the wheel and Lil belted in beside her, riding low in the bucket seats. A police scanner was fitted into the dashboard where the radio would normally be and every few seconds Lil twisted the dial to check for signals in the static. The scanner had been on the blink ever since they pulled out of Chinatown due to the proximity of Nedly who, unbeknownst to Quake, had tucked himself into the narrow space behind Lil’s seat and the parcel shelf.

  ‘Ninety-nine per cent chance!’ said Quake with a smirk. She had exchanged her dark glasses for clear ones and her long eyelashes shielded her green eyes as she stared through the unrelenting rain that was pelting the windscreen. ‘We’ll see. They’ve not even come close in weeks, as far as I can tell.’

  ‘I don’t believe them,’ said Lil stubbornly.

  ‘They sounded pretty confident, though,’ Quake mused. She clung expertly to the bends as they snaked south towards the river, her hands clad in tan-leather driving gloves, the wind streaming through the rear window vents rippling her headscarf.

  ‘A ninety-nine per cent chance of what?’ Nedly whispered right in Lil’s ear, making her jump, which caused Quake to swerve the car, hitting the kerb before bouncing back into the road.

  Lil shivered uncontrollably. ‘Sorry!’ she said to Quake, giving Nedly a stern look out of the corner of her eye. ‘I’m just a bit chilly.’

  ‘S’OK,’ said Quake, flicking a concerned glance at her and ramping up the car heater a couple of notches. ‘I’m freezing too tonight.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Nedly winced, flattening himself back against the parcel shelf.

  ‘Anyway, you have to hand it to them.’ Quake continued where she had left off. ‘Ghostcatcher, I mean. They’ve had nothing but misses lately and yet they still make it sound so …’

  ‘Inevitable,’ Lil murmured, and she stared out of the window at the glow of the city centre as it came into view, like a single ember burning in a pit of black ash. ‘I bet it’s just talk.’

  ‘What’s inevitable?’ Nedly persisted, leaning carefully forward again.

  Lil flashed her eyes at him. Tell you later.

  ‘Well, I hope they have something,’ said Quake. ‘Otherwise this story is going to run out of legs. This is the third false alarm this week. Aside from the fall in the serious crime rate immediately after they busted those ghosts at the doll hospital, the whole thing is starting to look thin on facts. Ghostcatcher’s own so-called readings are the only evidence that there even is another ghost, but if that’s true then what’s the problem? They caught the others easily enough.’

  Lil snorted at this and rolled her eyes comically at Nedly who grinned and leant further forward again. Ghostcatcher had only ever caught one ghost: Mr Grip. Lil, Abe, Margaret, Nedly and Naomi had got rid of all the others, but their part in the drama had remained a secret.

  Quake sighed thoughtfully. ‘Everything is pointing towards it being a hoax, except my instinct tells me that Peligan City is still haunted. Every now and again things just feel really creepy, and I can’t explain it.’ She shivered violently.

  Nedly retreated as quickly as he could, tucking himself into the furthest corner. His arms were wrapped round his legs and his cheeks were dark with embarrassment. Lil tried to catch his eye but he was staring fixedly out of the window.

  She flumped back in her seat. ‘If it’s just the creeps, then it’s no big deal, is it? I mean, you couldn’t say that he’s doing any harm.’

  Quake was quiet as she took the East Bridge over the Kowpye River and Lil looked out at the water rippling grey in the moonlight. Finally, as they pulled into the slower traffic heading downtown, Quake spoke again: ‘So, what makes you think it’s a he?’

  ‘What?’ Lil’s ears flamed red.

  ‘Just now, and talking to Virgil earlier, you asked what were their chances of catching “him”.’

  ‘I didn’t mean anything by it. Could be a she,’ said Lil. ‘Just not an “it”.’

  Quake considered this. ‘That might be an interesting story in itself. If we could find out who the Final Ghost was before they died, then maybe they could work out how to catch it.’

  Lil looked back over her shoulder. Nedly was still staring out of the small corner window as they passed beneath the streetlights. She turned back to Quake. ‘You said yourself, the serious crime rate has fallen. Nothing dangerously spooky has happened so …’ She let the statement hang. ‘Why don’t they give it a rest? Then maybe we could work on something else.’

  Quake dropped through the gears and pulled on to Spooner Row. She brought the Mercury to an abrupt standstill outside the Nite Jar Cafe. ‘Bored already?’ She gave Lil a jokey smile. ‘Look, if this ghost is out there, it’s a story; if it’s not out there and City Hall are knowingly using it as a distraction, it’s a story. Either way, we have to follow where it leads – we’re reporters: that’s what we do.’

  Lil paused in the doorway of the Nite Jar to pull off her dripping raincoat.

  ‘Sorry I made you jump in the car,’ Nedly said. Lil batted the apology away with a sprinkling of rainwater. ‘But what was there a ninety-nine per cent chance of again?’ He blinked at her earnestly.

  Lil gripped her coat by the collar and then turned her back on him, and slowly hung it over one of the hooks on the rack by the counter. She paused before she let go of it, and said, ‘Ninety-nine per cent chance that the ghost is real. That’s all.’ Then she turned to face him and smiled and he grinned back, looking relieved. ‘Come on, they’re waiting for us.’

  Abe and Margaret were already sitting in the booth. Abe had ordered a strong black coffee, a bowl of water for Margaret, a mug of hot chocolate for Lil and a plate of custard tarts. There was a copy of the Herald on the table. Abe covered it with his trilby when he saw Lil approach.

  While she waited for Nedly to take a seat, Lil peeled off her hat and rubbed her ears to get some life back into them and then slipped in beside him.

  Abe had buttoned his jacket as high as it would go and turned the lapels up to try to hide the caramel-coloured coffee stain that had soaked through his shirt. Lil grimaced apologetically at him, took a custard tart and then glanced over her shoulder to check they were alone. When she was sure no one was in earshot she said: ‘That was too close.’

  Abe nodded sagely. ‘Ghostcatcher are getting faster.’

  Nedly eyed the tarts and sat on his hands. ‘That house was empty – I’m sure of it. Who do you think called it in?’

  ‘Someone squawked.’ Lil narrowed her eyes at Abe. ‘Did you tell anyone you were going there?’

  Abe tipped his hat back and fastened his multi-purpose pliers round the handle of his coffee cup. ‘Not a soul.’

  ‘Well, they got wind of it from somewhere. If we hadn’t picked them up on Quake’s scanner, we would never have made it in time.’

  ‘Maybe nobody told them.’ Abe scooped up a tart and bit into the flaky pastry, sending a shower of it down his tie to nestle in the pouch of his buttoned jacket. ‘They probably just got lucky.’

  Lil wasn’t convinced. ‘They get their tip-offs from the Haunting Hotline. They weren’t just passing; either someone knew where Nedly would be or else that house wasn’t really empty.’ She took a big gulp of hot chocolate and then licked away the foam moustache. ‘What were you doing there anyway?’

  Abe gave her a grim look. ‘This was delivered this morning.’ He pulled a waxy-looking note from his inside pocket, unfolded and flattened it and then slid it across the table to Lil.

  It was a copy of a shipping note for a delivery that had come in two days earlier through Peligan City Docks. The vessel was the Mio Amore, the description of the goods was simply ‘cleaning products’, imported by a company called GCI Services, and their delivery address was the one in Chinatown. There was a note clipped to it:

  DEAR MANDREL INVESTIGATIONS

  THIS CONCERNS YOU.

  It was signed
simply:

  A FRIEND

  Nedly pointed. ‘That delivery address was the empty old house.’

  Lil narrowed her eyes. ‘Could have been a set-up. My bet is that this “A Friend” is probably not a friend at all. Maybe someone lured you to Chinatown to catch Nedly?’

  Nedly’s eyes grew as dark and as cold as a deep riverbed.

  Abe shifted uncomfortably. ‘Maybe we need to start picking our cases more carefully. Anyway, we’re not going to be able to work out who they are from this.’ He started to fold the note away again but Lil slapped a hand across it, pulled it to her side of the table and gave it the Penetrating Squint.

  It was typed in large and urgent-looking capitals, on ordinary paper with no distinguishing marks. ‘I wonder what kind of typewriter they used. Did anyone see it being posted? Did it go into your mailbox or under the door?

  Abe held up a pastry-crumb-covered finger while he swallowed the mouthful he had just taken and then said, ‘Hold on, one thing at a time.’ He patted down his mac in search of his notebook.

  Lil continued, ‘Can you check it for dabs?’

  ‘Dabs? Sure.’ He shrugged. ‘I can dust it but I’ve got nothing to check the fingerprints against.’

  ‘Maybe Monbatsu could help?’ Lil persisted.

  Abe wrinkled his eyes, and scribbled down a few notes. He was beaten but not sorry about it. ‘All right, I’ll follow it up.’

  Nedly pointed at the delivery note. ‘I think we should look further into this shipment too, just in case there is something in it.’

  ‘Good idea, Nedly,’ said Lil, taking out an old chewed pencil and spinning it a couple of times between her fingers. ‘We do need to get the skinny on the cargo but without ruffling any feathers. You check it out, but not on your own. Wherever it leads I’m coming too. If Ghostcatcher comes after you, they’re going to have to go through me first.’

  ‘And me,’ said Abe.

  Margaret barked sharply.

  Nedly gave them a crooked smile. ‘OK.’

  Lil stuck the pencil in her mouth, bit down on it thoughtfully and then said, ‘Abe, do you have any contacts down at the harbourmaster’s office? If we can find out what the shipment is – if it even exists – who it’s for and where it’s really going, it would be a start. ’

  Abe took a last swig of his coffee and put down the empty cup. ‘I can do that. Meet me on the corner of Fig Street tomorrow at eleven a.m.’ He put on his hat, swiped the newspaper off the table with his pliers and tucked it into his jacket, and then tried a reassuring smile on for size.

  Lil returned it gratefully, but when she looked past him out of the window and across the street at the newspaper A-board, her smile dropped. The agent was changing the paper. The headline was: ‘Gordian Vows: the Final Ghost’s Days Are Numbered’. Nedly caught her frowning at it and she rolled her eyes breezily as if to say, ‘Call that news!’

  Abe followed Lil’s stare. He shook his head wearily and counted out the last of his change and laid it on the table. ‘You would think there was no other news in town.’ He shrugged on his coat, and made for the door with Margaret at his heels.

  He was right. It was all the Herald could talk about. Ghost fever had struck and under its new editor Sam Tangiers the newspaper had recruited extra reporters just to dig for details on the Final Ghost.

  The headlines had come thick and fast: Fright Night at the Spookermarket! Bus Routes Cancelled: Hauntings on the Line! Bank Robber Confesses: the Final Ghost Made Me Do It!

  Every edition, every page. Suddenly, everything was the Final Ghost’s fault.

  Nedly glared at the A-board in silence, and when he finally spoke his voice was croaky and bitter. ‘No matter what I do, no matter how much I try to help fix things, it’s not enough. They won’t give me a chance.’ His bottom lip trembled and he bit down hard to stop it.

  Lil mentally kicked her own feelings of despair to the kerb and told him, ‘Don’t sweat it, Nedly. No one reads the Herald anyway.’

  But the truth was people were reading it. The Final Ghost campaign had been the Herald’s most successful yet: circulation figures had tripled. Previously you couldn’t have given it away; now people were actually queuing up to buy it.

  Even big stories got lost. Weeks earlier Lil had handed the Klaxon everything it needed to put two and two together to expose the evil genius Cornelius Gallows. Gallows had bound the spirits of the prisoners from the Secure Wing for the Criminally Insane to a collection of creepy poppets and used them to control the ghosts in an attempt to take over the city, but now he was dead.

  No one knew how Gallows had met his end. It was officially recorded that he was the last victim of the prison epidemic. But the crew of Mandrel Investigations knew there had been no epidemic, and their contact, Monbatsu, a pathologist at the city morgue, told them that Gallows had been strangled. The only known facts were these: Mr Grip, aka the spirit of the Peligan City Strangler, Loid Grainne, was freed by someone, and Gallows, his master, was found, strangled. Perhaps the crimes were linked.

  No one would ever know now because the Herald, the mouthpiece for City Hall, had buried the results of the inquest and ignored the Klaxon’s exposé on Gallows. Lil was certain that as they had reported that Gallows had perished at the asylum more than a decade earlier, they would never admit that they had wrongly recorded his death.

  And once the Herald realised the newspaper-selling power of ghosts it had jumped wholeheartedly on the bandwagon. The message was simple: ghosts exist, they are a threat, but City Hall was taking care of them. So what if in order to do this they had to raise taxes and cut back on services? It was all in the interests of public safety.

  City Hall’s initiative to dispose of the ghosts was an outfit called Ghostcatcher Inc., who had burst onto the scene a few weeks earlier and eliminated the most dangerous ghost of all, Mr Grip, with their high-tech experimental equipment.

  Since that night the Ghostcatcher van had been patrolling the streets, but they were only hunting one spook now. They called it the Final Ghost and to Peligan City it was public enemy number one. But Lil and Abe knew the city had it all wrong. The ghost was their friend and his name was Nedly Stubbs.

  Chapter 3

  The Most Important Meals of the Day

  Lil tore up the morning edition of the Herald as soon as it landed on the mat and stuffed it into the bag where they kept the bedding for her hamster, Waldo.

  In the kitchen the kettle was coming to the boil, the radio was on and the colander of blueberries resting on the draining board meant one thing: pancakes.

  ‘Morning!’ Lil said to her mum, and to Nedly who was sitting on the counter beside the sink.

  ‘Morning!’ they both replied at the same time.

  ‘Sleep well?’ said Naomi, pushing her spectacles back up her nose.

  ‘Like a log.’ Lil poured herself a tall glass of milk and drank half of it straight down.

  ‘Snug as a bug in a rug,’ said Nedly, his gaze following Naomi around the room.

  Naomi Potkin didn’t believe in ghosts. She was one of only two people that Lil knew of who was completely immune to the cold spots and creeping feelings of dread that surrounded Nedly. This made it easier for him to be around at home, and in Naomi’s company he could feel more like the boy that he was rather than the ghost he had become, even though she was completely oblivious to his presence. Lil knew she would have to try to convince her mother about Nedly’s existence one day; she was just waiting for the right time, but it never seemed to come.

  ‘So, how did you get on last night?’ Naomi put the frying pan on the hob and turned on the heat. ‘Have Ghostcatcher come up with anything yet?’

  Lil spooned coffee into the pot. ‘Nothing but false alarms so far.’

  Naomi frowned. ‘Gordian should pull the funding before it bankrupts the city.’ She threw a handful of blueberries into the mixing bowl. ‘If it wasn’t for Tangiers stoking the fire every time it died out, people might have forgotten abo
ut the Final Ghost; there’s so little credible evidence for it now.’ She took out her frustration on the batter. Then she turned to the pan and did a double take. ‘Did you put the butter in there or did I?’

  Lil was confused for a second. ‘No. I –’ She looked at Nedly, who was standing beside the butter dish beaming proudly. ‘Yes – I did it just now.’

  Naomi looked across the room to where Lil was standing by the coffee pot and then to the butter bubbling away on the hob in front of her. ‘OK, well – thanks.’ She ladled the mix into the pan in three golden discs, which expanded until they joined up with each other, like a cloverleaf. ‘If only there was some way to prove it.’

  Lil turned the radio up a notch and then nodded Nedly over to the kitchen dresser and started rattling the knives and forks in the drawer. ‘You can’t help, OK – not when Mum’s here,’ she whispered. ‘She doesn’t understand.’

  Nedly looked down. ‘I’m sorry.’ The room became colder, the steam that rose from the coffee cups turned white, and the grey morning light darkened. Naomi flipped the pancakes out of the pan and squinted out of the window at the clouds.

  Lil tried to catch Nedly’s eye. ‘It’s not your fault; it’s just –’ She jumped as Naomi put the plate on the table with a clonk, and grabbed a handful of cutlery.

  ‘Anyway,’ Naomi continued, ‘you’re the one with front-row seats as far as Ghostcatcher is concerned. Do you think there’s anything in it?’

  Lil carefully placed the knives and forks on the table. ‘The Final Ghost?’ Nedly was standing right in front of her; she tried not to look at him. ‘I think … I think I’m just going to keep an open mind for now.’

  ‘That’s the best kind to have.’ Naomi kissed her on the forehead and walked through Nedly, who cringed at the contact and turned a sickly shade of grey.

  Lil sat at the table and pulled out a second chair, angled slightly towards hers for Nedly to collapse into, putting her feet on the rungs so it didn’t look suspicious, then squeezed the maple syrup over her pancakes in a whirl, considered them for a second, and then squeezed again and went back the other way.