The Dead Speak Ill Of The Living (The Dead Speak Paranormal Mysteries Book 1) (42 page)

  
“Yes sir.”

  
“Are we quite sure our man is sober?”

  
“Most definitely sir, most definitely.”

  
“Well this is very interesting, and whatever they have certainly overlaps with
what we have here.”

  
“I thought so sir and brought it straight through. Shall we monitor them?”

  
“No, no, acquire them and bring them in.”

  
“Acquire… that’s what we do with the spirits sir?”

  
“I know, but we must have this technology, it will blend so well with the rest
of the project.”

  
“Kidnap them then?”

  
Steve looked at Malveo, and saw a hunger in his eyes. There was something going
on here that the secretary wasn’t fully aware of. And it wasn’t good.

  
“Yes, kidnap them. Alive of course.”

  
“What did we do before mobile dongles?” Dee wondered entirely sarcastically as
she drove along and Nazir used his laptop in the back.

  
“We had boring car journeys and we asking if we were nearly there yet.”

  
“Okay, it’s an improvement. What have you got?”

  
“Even I need time to read it.”

  
“Fine, let’s go for a coffee while you do.” Dee put her foot down and the car
began to move.

  
With a previously absent comic timing Joe asked “are we nearly there yet?”

  
Dee concluded he must be feeling better. She drove to her favourite abandoned
café, and they trouped in ordering coffees and four plates of all day
breakfast, heart buster edition.

  
“Okay, I think I’ve got something,” Nazir said. “Or rather the absence of
something.”

  
“Go on,” Dee said perplexed.

  
“There is surprisingly little online about how to grab and move ghosts. Plenty
of people wanting to see ghosts, plenty wanting them gone in an exorcism, but
very few wanting to take a ghost with them.”

  
“When you say few, how little?” Pohl asked.

  
“In a niche subject, this is the mouse hole in the cellar. All I can find are
tales of people’s spirits moving when their bodies were moved, nothing about
rituals or machines or any way to do that.”

  
“So we’re dealing with groundbreaking technology,” Joe said mostly to himself,
obviously impressed.

  
“Indeed.” But lunch was served, so everyone tucked in and tore through most of
a pig and plenty of other tasty treats. When they finally finished Nazir eyed
up the dessert menu.

  
“You’re supposed to be searching,” Dee told him, and looked herself. “I think
we’ll all benefit going out working than having a Chocolate Apocalypse.”

  
“Spoilsport” Nazir moaned.

  
“Hah, you watch your figure more than me!” Although, strictly speaking, Joe
watched Dee’s figure more than Dee.

  
They left and walked back to Dee’s car.

  
“Explain to me how registrations work and don’t work,” Pohl asked.

  
“Right,” Nazir said and pointed to a van, “you see that registration number,
well, err, oh that one’s fake as well.” He then saw it was a blue van. “Oh
fuck.”

  
“Don’t move,” came a voice from behind them, and the group turned to see a
semi-circle of men and women, all armed with pistols just removed from pockets.

  
“Thank you for spotting that Nazir,” Dee dripped in sarcasm, “it’s not like
we’ve been sat by a window for the last twenty minutes.”

  
“Someone will see you?” Joe tried helpfully, aiming to put the gun people off.

  
“Joe,” Dee whispered, “we just ate at a diner with so few people they don’t
need to clean.”

  
“Please get in the van,” came a forceful voice.

  
“At least they’re politer than the last time I was abducted,” Joe told the
group.

  
“They haven’t stuck a syringe in my neck, I’ll give them that.”

  
“In the van.”

  
The journey took an hour, and the quartet knew this because they still had
their watches and could check the time. They could have used their phones as
these were still in their pockets, but the two men in the back of the van with
their guns put foursome off looking. The gunmen sat with their backs to the
door, while the four friends were arranged along the driver’s partition, and
Pohl was sat a little further forward as she was just that little bit smaller.

  
So far the gunmen had resisted any attempt at conversation, so topics like
‘where are we going’, and ‘why are you kidnapping ghosts’ were unanswered. And
then Dee’s phone rang.

  
As everyone turned to look at her, Dee looked at her pocket.

  
“Is that the theme to The Bill?” Joe asked disbelieving.

  
“Maybe.”

  
“What’s The Bill?” Nazir asked.

  
“Old TV show, about coppers.”

  
“Ah, so Maquire is calling.”

  
“Can I answer this?” Dee asked the gunmen, who shook their heads. “It’s my
boyfriend,” she tried sweetly, and had never mastered flirting her way to
results so they shook their heads again. “He a policeman?” she tried as a last
result, and that brought a scowl but no solution. The phone rang for thirty
seconds, stop, then ring for thirty seconds again. After that it finally rang
off.

  
“Persistent isn’t he,” Nazir said.

  
“Yes,” Dee said proudly.

  
“Is he like that in bed?”

  
“This is neither the time nor the place.”

  
When the hour was up the van pulled to a halt, moved again, then pulled to a
halt, and the driver and passenger could be heard to get out. Then the back of
the van’s door was knocked, opened, and everyone got out.

  
The quartet found themselves stood in a car park, surrounded by tall trees
which blocked out the road and everything beyond. All they could see was the
white plastic and glass building which stretched off into the distance. “Well
they shit on our old lab,” Joe sighed.

  
“You sure it’s a lab?” Nazir asked.

  
“Must be. This is another group of dodgy scientists.” Joe was wondering whether
his own team would have counted.

  
“We seem to be drawn to them like a fat kid to pizza.”

  
“I prefer flies to shit,” Dee told Nazir.

  
They were beckoned inside, marched through corridors, and shown into an office
that was impressive for both its tidiness, and the number of model machines
scattered about.

  
“Hello, nice to see you,” said a tubby man who wore his weight well.

  
As he shook their hands Dee pointed out “you do remember you’ve kidnapped us
right?”

  
“Yes, yes, but I’m sure we’ll be able to share knowledge which will make your
trip worth it.”

  
Dee doubted it. “Let’s start with your name.”

  
“I’m Chairman Malveo.”

  
“My daughter has a cat called that,” Pohl said.

  
“One, it’s Chairman Meow,” Dee hissed, “and two, the idea is to not get us
killed.”

  
“No offence is taken. But how about you show me this marvellous machine of
yours. In the backpack I take it?”

  
“I’d rather withhold that information for now,” Joe explained.

  
“I’m sure you realise that’s a little odd given we have you prisoners.
Co-operation brings rewards.”

  
“Then why don’t you go first?”

  
“Very well, very well. Come with me,” and the group were led through the
building, Malveo in front, armed men at the back, until they came to a long
corridor. There were doors every so often all leading to the right, and large
windows so you could look in.

  
Malveo stopped at the first door. “In this room we have been working on, and
perfected, a device for being able to capture ghosts. The spirits you are used
to talking to, they’re tied down, hard to move. Our little device, which is
self-powered and completely portable, will seize a ghost and allow us to move
them.” The visitors nodded, looking at the little box which had pipes and wires
running out of it. “We have created a case for more portable ones.”

  
“I know how that goes,” Joe said out loud.

  
“But you’ll want us to prove we can do it, so we have also developed this,” and
they walked to the next window. “In here we have developed another device,
sadly not portable, which allows us to see the ghosts we have captured.” As he
waved his hand a white coated lady inside flicked a switch, and a green light
appeared, and within was a twisting, struggling shape. “A spirit!” Malveo
proudly announced.

  
“Why are you doing this?” Joe asked, feeling cold.

  
“Come to the next room, and here we are. This is the bank where we collect the
souls,” and a light was on, revealing thirty tormented spirits trapped within
the confines of their machines.

  
“That doesn’t answer why.”

  
“This last room does, look inside.”

  
“That’s a prosthetic arm?”

  
On looking through the window at the electronics inside, Dee had focused on a
robotic arm which was sticking straight up from a table, its shoulder
disappearing inside more machinery.

  
“This is our pride and joy. We have developed a machine which can be controlled
by a soul.”

  
All looked at Malveo. “A soul? It can move the arm?”

  
“Yes, under lab conditions at the moment, but yes.”

  
“Amazing.”

  
“So, please, how does your machine work?”

  
“I don’t know,” and Joe looked down.

  
“You don’t know? Did you steal it?”

  
“No, no, I was on the team, I put it into the box. But none of us know how it
happened. It was a total mistake.”

  
Malveo scowled. “I have a top secret laboratory spending millions of pounds in
carefully sourced money, and you found it by accident?”

  
“That’s basically it, yes.”

  
Dee wasn’t feeling happy. “So, the fact you just told us all about your top
secret project means we’re not making it home for tea?”

  
“Damn straight.”

  
“Good thing we had such a large lunch,” Nazir said, looking on the bright side.

  
Malveo ordered them searched, and their phones were removed, as was the machine
which the Chairman was last seen taking into one of the lab rooms. The group
were then led back down the corridor, into a small room with no windows and a door
that was electronically locked behind them.

  
“Did you see those souls?” Joe said.

  
“Another laboratory, more locked doors. We need to get ourselves guns or
something.”

  
Pohl wasn’t keen on Dee’s suggestion. “Guns cause more problems than they solve.
We’d probably have been killed in a firefight.”

  
“Kung fu skills then. Would be handy if we could beat the shit out of a few
people…hang on, you said no guns? You’re the woman who stabbed a bloke to
shit.”

 
“I’m learning and moving forward without violence.”

  
“Bloody therapy.”

  
“But did you see those souls,” Joe said again, louder, to the group.

  
“Yes, we saw them,” Dee snapped.

  
“No, really see,” and he looked her directly in the face: “those souls were
distressed, tortured. They were no better than lab animals, captured to be
experimented on.”

  
“You never used animals,” Dee remembered.

  
“No we did not.”

  
“But what can we do, realistically? We’re stuck in a room.”

  
“Working on it,” Nazir said, and they turned to find him fiddling with a small
phone.

  
“They removed our phones?” Pohl queried.

  
“Only my main one, I keep a sneaky backup for emergencies.”

  
“I dread to think where you’d hidden that,” Dee sighed.

  
“Calling the police?” Pohl asked.

  
“No, I, duck, people are leaving.”

  
The group went into nonchalant mode, as five thirty pm had arrived and the
science staff were knocking off. Nazir continued to work knelt down so close to
the underside of the window he couldn’t be seen. And then the door went click.

  
“We are in business,” he said rising, but Joe got to the door first.

  
“We have to go free those souls.”

  
“How do we do that?”

  
“The old fashioned way, just break things.”

  
Dee, Joe and Nazir went back through the complex, entered the long corridor,
found no opposition, and cracked the door to the holding cell open. Then they
pulled panels out, ripped wires, snapped connections, and the lights went off
and there was an almost audible gasp as the souls found themselves free.