The Ungrateful Dead

by Adam Simcox

Genres: Contemporary Fantasy; Urban Fantasy; Police Procedurals

Synopsis

The gripping third instalment in Adam Simcox's supernatural crime DYING SQUAD series.

A MISSING DETECTIVE

Detective Joe Lazarus is missing. The Dying Squad are on the case, but following reports of his sighting, signs suggest he may have fallen back into his criminal ways.

A DEATH IN A NIGHTCLUB

A new drug is taking the world by storm. Spook allows the living to see the dead, but its effects are often fatal. The Dying Squad's visit to a Berlin nightclub quickly turns their search into an entirely more sinister case.

TWO WORLDS COLLIDE

Because the invention of Spook has another purpose. One that's been decades in the planning. Two worlds are on a collision course - the living and the dead's - and the Dying Squad must summon all their investigatory cunning to stop a plot that could change people's (after)lives for ever.

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 320

Sample

Poor but sexy. That was how Ella’s dad described Berlin.

Ella wasn’t convinced. As far as she could see, poor had sold out long ago, and sexy had always been in the eye of the beholder.

Certainly there wasn’t much sex appeal in front of her. SO36 was an embalmed vision of punk rock past. Real effort had gone into making the club look as run-down as possible; it was like an interior designer had asked Alexa to show them weaponised nostalgia, then followed the AI’s designs to the letter.

Not that Ella cared particularly. Punk rock had always been her dad’s thing (her grandad’s too, if the old man’s stories were to be believed), and she’d never begrudged him teasing the little hair he’d had left into a blue mohawk. She’d even refrained from taking the piss when he’d bought a new leather jacket then spent the best part of a week making it look like a frayed life partner. Just like everyone else here, he hadn’t so much tried to recapture his East German youth as chloroform it.

No one really seemed to be old in society any more; there were kids like her, and there were old-timers in retirement homes waiting to die. Everyone else took a hammer to middle age and pounded it into a smear of youthful mush.

The support band finished their set and the crowd dispersed, making their way towards her vantage point at the bar. She drew a few curious glances, as she’d known she would; she was the youngest person here by about thirty years. It wasn’t just her age, though. She was the spitting image of her dad, and half the people here would have known him. Liked him, too, because he’d been that sort of guy. Even his enemies still loved her papa.

Ella shivered, taking a slug of water and noting, not for the first time, the slightly odd atmosphere in the place, the distrustful glances exchanged between the old punks. ‘When a city’s gutted down the middle like Berlin was, the stitches sewing it back together don’t always take,’ her dad had told her. ‘If elephants never forgot, old punks stubbornly refuse to; defections and perceived betrayals throb still in the city’s veins.’

What she’d give to see him again.

That was what tonight was about. The chance to make that crazy dream a reality.

‘I knew you’d come.’

She turned to see a punk slouching against the bar. She hadn’t noticed him approach, but then in his game she supposed that was a virtue. Certainly it was impressive when you considered his size and general appearance. Green trench coat, a straggling apology of spiked hair. Just another ageing punk in a room full of them.

The difference was Klaus Weber’s profession.

‘How did you know I’d come?’ Ella replied. ‘I didn’t know I’d come.’

‘Because you loved your dad. Because today would have been his birthday, and there was nowhere he loved more than this place.’

She looked around and shook her head. ‘It’s like a punk crypt. A fucking rock-and-roll theme park.’

Klaus laughed. ‘So cynical. You’re a punk, Ella. It’s in your blood.’

She took another slug of water. ‘Do you have them?’

He clasped his hands together. ‘I have one. That’s more than enough, believe me.’

‘I’m no lightweight,’ said Ella.

‘This isn’t coke or ket. This is a medical-grade drug that doesn’t officially exist.’

‘For something that doesn’t exist, an awful lot of people seem to know about it.’

‘An awful lot of people talk shit,’ said Klaus. ‘I’m the only supplier in the city. You wouldn’t have a chance of buying from me if it wasn’t for your dad.’

‘Will it work? Will I see him?’

‘It’ll work all right. Whether you’ll see him depends on whether he’s here or not.’

‘If he’s going to be anywhere, he’s going to be here,’ said Ella. ‘It was his favourite place in the world. How much?’

Klaus told her. Ella considered the amount daylight robbery.

She was bathed in the light of night, though, so she paid the money and took delivery of the bright pink pill.

She threw it down her throat, chasing it with a slug of water.

Now all she had to do was wait.

It was called Spook and if it was a party pill, the Day of the Dead festival was its spiritual home.

The rumours about it had started a couple of months ago. About how taking it allowed you to see the dead. You didn’t split it, and you didn’t take more than one. Ella had been cynical – since that girl blew up Tokyo, everyone claimed they could see the dead – but ultimately, curiosity had drowned her cynicism.

Desperation, too. It was a year to the day since her dad had died, which meant it was a year to the day that a big part of her had died, too. If this drug was legit, it meant she could see him again. Talk to him. Let him know how much she missed him. When she’d discovered his favourite band were playing at his favourite club on what would have been his sixtieth birthday, well, she’d seen it as a sign.

A murmur went up from the crowd, one that hinted that within minutes the lights would dip, the band would come on stage and the real world would be forgotten for a while. That appealed to Ella. The real world hadn’t been working out so well for her lately. Her school grades were in the toilet, and her mum was constantly on her case. It was like her mum didn’t miss her dad at all. Like all she could do was sweat the unimportant stuff.

She looked around the club. Everyone here was old, but they were pretty visibly not dead. They were supposed to glimmer, ghosts. That was what people who’d dropped Spook said online, anyway. Not much glimmer here, just manufactured dirt and grime.

The track pumping over the venue’s speakers came to an end.

The lights dimmed.

Here we fucking go.

The band took the stage.

Colonel, the frontman and lead guitarist, stood, arms aloft, a returning general soaking up the acclaim of his grateful subjects. Ella could never quite make her mind up about Colonel – he was either the coolest dude around or one you wanted to beat to death – but her dad always said that was the point of a good frontman. You didn’t want them to be like you. You were boring, and you came to gigs to escape boring.

Ella swallowed. Nothing doing with the pill, yet.

‘We are the people!’ Colonel bellowed into the microphone. ‘We are the power!’

The chant was taken up by the crowd, who pressed in closer to the stage.

A techie handed Colonel a guitar. Feedback rang around the room.

The first chords were struck in fury.

Then it began to happen.

It was like Ella had something in the corner of her eye. A shimmering blur of light, just outside her range of sight. The more she squinted, the blurrier it got. Then it solidified a little.

There was someone on stage with the band who wasn’t the band.

She could tell that by the way they glimmered. Couldn’t tell much besides that, at least not yet, but it was like there was a hologram up there on stage. A glitchy-as-fuck one.

Ella’s throat was dry. She lifted her bottle of beer, frowning when she realised it was empty. She needed another drink. That would settle her down a bit.

She backwards-shuffled towards the bar, her eyes fixed on the stage. The figure on it was gaining clarity by the second. Whoever it was, they were short.

No.

Could it be him? It was what the rumours always said, of course, but she’d never really believed them. She just liked the fact they were there to believe.

Where was her dad? She’d been so sure he’d be here. Instead, she’d got an urban myth.

She called out her dad’s name, more in desperation than expectation.

People were looking at her strangely.

‘What are you drinking?’

Ella turned reluctantly away from the stage, realising she’d backed all the way up to the bar.

She blinked.

This couldn’t be real.

A man was standing behind the bar. He had an old Stones T-shirt on, a pair of beaten-looking grey jeans and a shock of flame-coloured hair teased into a blizzard of spikes. So far so punk, but he also glimmered. And that was where the horror began, not ended: his face was covered with green vines. One had popped clean through his eyeball. Others wound their way out of his mouth.

‘What are you drinking?’ the flame-coloured vine man asked again.

Ella staggered away, knocking into the gig-goers around her, drawing looks of irritation she didn’t notice.

Her throat got drier. Felt like it was tightening, too.

She stumbled, her knees going, the floor coming. She smacked against it, hard. A mosh pit had formed in front of her. Most people hadn’t noticed her fall, but a couple had. They had the same vines as the man at the bar. A woman with a mane of them flowing down her back. A man with them wound tightly round his fists like a boxing glove.

Half the man’s face seemed to be missing.

Ella began to scream, and found that once she’d started, it was difficult to stop.

‘Theatre of Dreams. Theatre of shite, more like.’

‘Very poetic,’ said Megan, rolling her eyes.

Bits puffed out his chest proudly. ‘Fucking Oscar Wilde, me.’

‘Maybe, now he’s dead.’

‘No one’s really dead,’ said Bits. ‘Look at me. ’Sides, I met the cunt in the Pen once.’

‘No you didn’t,’ said Megan.

‘Straight up. Mouthy bastard, Wilde. Mopey as fuck, too.’

‘Well, he was dead. Has to put a cramp on your mood, that.’

‘Bollocks. I’m a sunbeam.’

‘You’re a moron,’ said Megan, ‘but that’s all right, because you’re my moron.’

She swayed with the tram, allowing herself a small smile. On striking up this partnership with the dead-as-dead Bits, she’d perfected the trick of talking out of the corner of her mouth. She’d then realised it was a pointless skill to have in the modern age; all she needed to do was stick in a pair of headphones and it looked like she was chatting on the phone rather than to thin air.

She looked to her left, then right. The tram was packed full of United fans, most of them in stomach-clinging replica shirts. Not a flattering garment on runway models, let alone beery football supporters. Still, they weren’t paying her any attention, which was a novelty. Her escape from the Generation Killer had lent her unwanted notoriety. She was used to double-takes in the street as people tried to work out where they knew her from.

She usually just told them she’d been on Love Island.

That she’d survived Elias, the aforementioned killer, was thanks to Bits. His partner, Joe Lazarus, too. Lazarus was missing as a result of that rescue, so when Bits had asked for her help in finding him, Megan had figured it was the least she could do. And in the course of that investigation, if she found out information on her own sketchy past – namely, just why it was she could see the dead, and how a grandfather she’d never known fitted into that – then all the better.

On cue, she picked at the barcode on the back of her hand, a skin comfort-blanket she didn’t know she needed.

‘Bad habit, that,’ said Bits.

‘I’ve had worse,’ Megan replied, peering out of the window. Floodlights punched the sky as Old Trafford loomed on the horizon, a sight sufficient to ignite another round of chanting in the tram carriage. She noticed Bits twitch slightly. If she hadn’t known what to look for, she’d have missed it, but she did, so she didn’t.

‘You need a gum hit?’

He shook his head. ‘Had some of the gas and air back at the shelter, didn’t I?’

‘That was a couple of hours ago.’

‘Need to ration it. Running low on supplies.’

‘If you give it away to every Tom, Dick and poltergeist, it will run low.’

Bits sniffed. ‘Can’t keep it all for myself, can I? Not what the shelter’s about.’

‘The last person to run the shelter tortured then killed the spirits staying there,’ said Megan. ‘I think the mission statement’s become muddied.’

‘My job to clean it up, then. Seeing as it was the Pen that employed that person.’

Megan considered him. ‘Tell me honestly: how much memory gum do you have left?’

He looked away. ‘Couple of days’ worth. Three, with the gas and air.’

‘Then you’ll have to go back to the Pen?’

‘If I can. Was tricky as fuck getting to the soil – can’t imagine getting back’s going to be much easier. Not even going to try, until I find Joe.’

‘How do you know he’s still around?’

‘Because the bloke we’re about to see reckons he met him a week ago.’

The bloke was known as Spooky Dave.

It was a nickname that suggested a character of whimsy and wonder, the sort of fellow who counted Halloween as his favourite holiday. That he was one of the hardest fuckers in Manchester had always amused Bits, when he’d been alive enough to be amused. Now he was dead, it merely intrigued him.

He walked shoulder to shoulder with Megan as they climbed the steep concrete steps into the Stretford End’s guts. He’d been to Manchester derbies when he’d been breathing, but that was when he’d had a season ticket for Maine Road: it had been inflatable bananas, E’s and 5–1 thrashings in those days. He’d never set foot in United’s ground before, and wasn’t comfortable doing so now.

Still, a tingle prickled his spine as he was greeted by the vision of seventy-odd-thousand baying, yelling football fans. It was a sight he never thought he’d see again, and such a display of pure, unfiltered life was both wonderful and a raking reminder of what he’d lost.

Like your mate winning the lottery, he thought. You’re pleased for him, but you’re pissed off it didn’t happen to you instead.

‘Ever been to a football match before?’ he asked Megan.

‘Once,’ she replied. ‘An ex took me. I brought a book along, so it wasn’t a complete waste of time.’

‘Bet he loved that.’

‘Split up at half-time, which was forty-five minutes too late.’

Bits shook his head. ‘You’re well high-maintenance.’

‘Yeah, I’m a real princess. Where’s the guy we’re supposed to be meeting?’

Bits tore his attention from the on-pitch action, transferring it to the transfixed crowd. He knew they’d come out at the right entrance, but spotting Spooky Dave amongst this glut of humanity would still prove tricky.

Until it wasn’t.

He pointed upwards. Megan followed his finger to ten rows above him.

‘You’ve got to be fucking joking,’ she said.

If he hadn’t been so feared, Spooky Dave would have been catcalled at every United home game. As it was, the row above and below his didn’t so much as look in his direction. A few hands were raised and lowered to shake when paying their respects, but these were season-ticket holders. The tourists, if they were caught staring at Dave and the empty row of seats next to him, were quickly encouraged by the regulars to avert their gaze down to the pitch. You didn’t stare at Spooky Dave without a copper-bolted invitation, and usually not even then.

Fortunately for them, Bits did have such an invitation, and he was counting on Dave being intrigued enough by Megan, seeing as she shared his ability to see the dead, to give her a pass.

To the naked living eye, the ten seats next to Spooky Dave were empty. Those fans who sat below and above them would often complain of a cold, damp draught, one that went above the usual chilly winds football grounds ‘enjoyed’. That was because the seats were anything but empty: Megan stared, fascinated, at the row of shimmering spirits that occupied them. Their milky eyes were focused with a laser-like intensity on the pitch, all of them wearing United shirts from different eras.

Ghostly football hooligans, she thought. I’ve seen it all now. Or rather, I haven’t. I’ve only seen the tip of an insane fucking iceberg.

Spooky Dave gave the spirits a run for their money, looks-wise.

He’d eschewed the regulation replica shirt for a sharply cut navy shirt. A deepred turban sat on top of his head, and his long black beard was streaked with slivers of grey. Megan put him at sixty, but wouldn’t have been surprised to discover he was fifteen years either side of that estimation.

He stood, arms crossed, surveying the action on the pitch impassively. Such an action would have normally brought a steward’s request to sit down, but here the officials very pointedly looked in the other direction.

‘You can see them, then.’

A voice deeper than she’d have expected. One that couched no fuckery.

She shuffled along the row to the left of the spirits, stopping when she was one (free) seat away from Dave. ‘They’re hard to miss.’

‘Every other fucker in the ground has. Never met another like me, that could see the dead. Thought I was a freak.’

‘If you are,’ said Megan, ‘then we’re a couple of freaks together.’

Because I mean it. And the more he sees what we’ve got in common, the more he’ll trust me.

Or trust me as much as someone nicknamed ‘Spooky’ can.

‘Curse it more times than I don’t,’ said Dave. ‘Scared me shitless as a young’un.’

‘Makes a liar of any adult that says there’s no bogeyman in your wardrobe, or under your bed,’ Megan replied. ‘Because usually there is.’

‘Normalised it all, didn’t she? That Hanna girl and her video.’ Dave’s gaze was still on the pitch. ‘Now half the world claims to see the dead. All it took was her nuking Tokyo.’

Megan nodded. ‘Hate late-adopters. It’s like when a band you’ve liked for ages gets famous without your permission.’

Spooky Dave finally tore his attention from the pitch and looked from Megan to Bits, who hovered a few feet back. ‘What’s a young girl like you hanging out with an old lag like that for?’

‘Twenty-three when I got blown up,’ Bits replied, puffing out his sparrow chest.

‘City-centre bomb was decades ago,’ Dave replied, ‘so death must suit you.’

Megan nodded towards the spirits that sat alongside Dave, with their smorgasbord of United shirts. ‘Are these people you knew?’

Dave nodded. ‘My old foot soldiers. None of them passed over when they died. Seems to go that way sometimes, when they’ve been a wrong’un and met a vicious death.’

Megan stared at them closely. They were a motley crew. None of them looked like they’d gone quietly into the good night.

Ah. Now she realised how Bits had obtained this meeting.

‘We’ve had a couple of these lads in the shelter.’

Spooky Dave nodded. ‘Been dead a while, most of them. They get confused, except for when there’s a match on; it’s the only thing they really understand. Vines over their body. Elias, the bloke before, took care of them.’

Until he didn’t, Megan didn’t say.

‘Now that your lad Bits here has taken over, he does the same thing for ’em. Gives them a bit of dignity. Cares for them. Doesn’t go unnoticed by the likes of me.’

‘Do what I can,’ said Bits, shuffling, embarrassed. ‘It’s not much, but it’s more than fuck-all.’

One of United’s strikers blazed over the bar. Megan allowed for the oooh before saying: ‘Bits reckons you’ve seen Joe Lazarus.’

‘Right out with it. Good for you. Who’s got time to fuck around?’

Not me, thought Megan. Not Joe, either.

The whistle blasted for half-time. Finally Dave gave her his full attention. ‘Yeah, I’ve seen your ghost. Can always smell plod, dead or alive. He was with a German fella. Hans.’

‘Was Hans dead?’ asked Bits.

Dave shook his head. ‘Alive, though someone should have told his complexion. Nasty-looking bastard.’

‘How did the meeting come about?’

‘They know I’m the main boy that deals with Berlin. Move a lot of gear from there to here. It’s my main supply source.’

‘Was Joe trying to arrest you?’ said Bits, frowning.

‘He’s a fucking spirit,’ Dave spat. ‘How would that work? Nah, he was working with this Hans. They wanted to know if I’d been offered a drug called Spook.’

‘Had you?’ said Bits.

‘I wouldn’t touch that shit.’

‘What does it do?’ asked Megan.

‘Word is you pop a pill, and it lets you see the dead, just like you and me can.’

She shook her head. ‘That’s got to be bollocks.’

‘Why? There have to be more like us. What’s to stop some mad scientist experimenting on them? Hop, skip and a jump to them being able to bottle it up and sell it to punters who want to experience the same thing.’

‘But why would anyone want that?’

‘You’re a woman that asks a lot of questions,’ Dave said.

‘I’m a woman that needs a lot of answers,’ Megan replied. ‘Appreciate you don’t have a reason in the world to give me them.’

He considered, then shrugged. ‘Likes of me and you need to stick together. No other fucker’ll have our back.’

‘Why are people taking it, then?’

‘Why’s anyone take any drug? For the kick. For the thrill. It doesn’t last for ever, and that Hanna lass, she got a lot of people curious. Started something with what happened in Tokyo. Pill only lasts a few hours, from what I hear. Fuck, I’d drop one if I couldn’t see the dead.’

‘This Spook something you sell, then?’ asked Bits.

Dave shook his head. ‘I said I didn’t, cloth ears. Side-effects are brutal. Potent as fuck, and if you take more than one, you’re dead. Not worth it. I’m old school. Like the classics. Know where I stand with coke and E’s. This Spook muck? All bets are off.’

‘You give Joe any info?’ said Bits.

Dave shot him a look that could kill the dead. ‘I’m no snitch. Plod’s plod, whether it’s breathing or not.’

Megan looked from Dave to Bits curiously.

‘He doesn’t count,’ said Dave, ‘because he’s one of our own, no matter what his dead sheriff’s badge says.’

‘Did you get a sense of why Joe wanted to know about this drug?’ she asked.

‘Got the sense he was the junior partner. Hans was calling the shots.’

‘What were their intentions, do you think? Did you get the impression they were trying to stop the supply of Spook, or seize it for themselves?’

‘Joe wouldn’t be interested in that tackle,’ said Bits.

‘What about Hans, though?’ Megan replied.

‘Got no more info on him,’ said Dave. ‘I know someone that might, though.’ He nodded at Bits. ‘Your Michelle.’

Bits swallowed, vertigo taking hold. ‘What?’

‘You used to knock around with her when you were still breathing. Right?’

He nodded.

‘Well, her and her nephew have a bit of a rival concern going. Small-time enough not to put my nose out of joint, and they pay me the right respect. They flog anything new on the market. Road-test it. You want to find this Joe of yours, and this Spook drug he’s chasing, that’s where I’d start.’

The guilty always had a certain look.

In Joe’s experience, this look wasn’t furtive; furtive was for rank amateurs. It wasn’t shifty, either. No, the truly guilty had a sort of simmering rage that bubbled just underneath the surface. The naïve would see this as indignation at being wrongly accused, but Joe knew the truth: it was anger at being caught out. Frustration that someone had scraped away their lies to reveal the truth. If there was one thing he knew, it was that he was good at finding that truth, even if it was unpalatable.

Especially if it was unpalatable.

Take the man tied to the chair in front of him. He had guilt plastered all over his trust-fund face.

This was not a man used to being taken to task. This was not a man used to being disbelieved, and it made that man angry. He was trying to smuggle this anger through the door as outrage, but his eyes betrayed him. He knew something, and it was Joe’s job to find out what exactly.

‘Do you believe in ghosts, Luke?’

Well, his and his partner’s job.

Hans emerged from the shadows. It was like he’d stumbled out of Aryan-master-race casting; a shock of blonde hair buzz-cut to within an inch of its life, a frame of billowing muscle and rippling sinew, and a cut-glass South African accent that screamed mercenary. A fighter, even when he was a lover.

His eyes were his most striking feature, though. There was a glassy, glimmering quality to them, like they’d been ripped from the ghost of a shark.

The man tied to the chair certainly seemed unsettled by them.

‘I don’t know who you think I am,’ said Luke, ‘but you’re making a big mistake.’

Hans placed his hands behind his back. ‘Wouldn’t be the first time. Doubt it will be the last. Now, I asked you a question: do you believe in ghosts?’

Joe smiled to himself. This was always the best bit.

‘No, I don’t believe in ghosts,’ Luke said, puffing himself up as much as one could when one was tied to a chair, ‘because I’m not six years old.’

Hans smiled. ‘More’s the pity, right? Things are so much simpler when you’re a kid. Adults like you and me, we’re always so quick to dismiss them, but kids see things, man. The shit three-year-olds have told me, it’d turn your hair white. Way I see it, those little kiddies don’t have overactive imaginations – they’re just telling us what they see. Maybe there are monsters under the bed. Or ghosts.’

‘Why don’t you go and fuck a ghost,’ Luke said, a sneer on his face, ‘considering you love them so much?’

Joe saw the fear behind the sneer. Luke was scared.

He was right to be.

Hans took a step forward. ‘Maybe I will. Maybe I’ll let you watch. That your kick, Luke?’ He looked behind him, straight at Joe. ‘What do you think, Lazarus?’

‘Who you talking to?’ said Luke, straining to see past Hans.

Hans didn’t reply, instead gifting Luke a small smile.

The sneer slipped from Luke’s face. ‘Since that Tokyo thing, everyone sees ghosts. It’s pure bullshit, man.’

Hans nodded sadly. ‘Ghosts have become a thing, a drug to be passed around that everyone wants to try. Thing is, me and my partner, we think you’ve been helping them see those ghosts. Or rather, selling the means to see them. I’m talking about Spook.’

Luke put the sneer back on, but Joe was of the opinion it didn’t fit as well this time.

‘Never heard of it.’

Hans sighed. ‘I mean, at least sell us the lie. You’ve obviously heard of it. Everyone’s heard of it. A good number of them have tried it. A drug that lets you see the dead? What’s not to love?’

Luke curled his lip. ‘Don’t run in those circles.’

‘You’re a drug dealer, man.’

‘Bullshit.’

Hans held his hands up. ‘Now, normally my partner and I wouldn’t care. Not under our remit, dealers, even high-end ones like you. And you are high-end, my friend. Politicians. Footballers. Film stars. You’re quite the shining light, aren’t you? Which makes me think you supply Spook, too. Why wouldn’t you? It’s the hottest ticket in town.’

Spray out enough shit, thought Joe, and some of it will stick.

Hans took a couple of steps forward, then crouched down in front of Luke.

‘I’m going to give you a chance to tell us what you know about it. You’re big-time, but you’re not the main event. Tell us who the Spook supplier is, and we’ll send you on your merry way.’

‘Don’t know who you are or where you’re getting your information from,’ said Luke. ‘I work in finance. Sure, I’ve dabbled in the odd bit of coke now and again – they literally pay it as bonuses. I’m not a dealer, though. Why would I be? It’d be a pay cut.’

Hans shook his head like he’d just been told he had terminal cancer.

‘Reason why I asked you whether you believed in ghosts? It’s because you’re about to meet one.’

I’m up, thought Joe.

They’d got this routine down well now, the old good cop/dead cop. It was strange: in many ways the brutality he was about to hand out fitted him like a glove, but then in other ways it felt contrived and plain wrong. He supposed that was the problem with struggling to remember who you were: false narratives and conjured-up histories competed for the right to tell you your truth.

He approached Luke, his fists flexing. It required a little drama, this act; go in all guns blazing and you sucked the tension right out of it. You had to properly haunt the suspect first. Do it right, and you didn’t even need to throw a punch.

Unless you wanted to. Joe found that he usually did.

Circling the suspected drug dealer, he blew on the back of his neck. Luke shivered.

‘Cold in here, right? said Hans, smirking. ‘That’s the problem with abandoned warehouses: they’re draughty.’

‘That’s it?’ said Luke. ‘A little breeze, and you expect me to believe in ghosts?’

Joe leaned closer, drew back his finger, then flicked the restrained man’s ear. Luke cried out in surprise.

‘That was your ear,’ said Hans. ‘Imagine what comes next.’

Luke tried to look behind him. ‘I’m a commodities broker, you prick. I don’t know anything about Spook.’

Hans looked directly at Joe and nodded.

Joe returned the nod, then kicked out with his foot, sending Luke and the chair sprawling to the floor. A small smile played on his lips. Hard to deny that this was enjoyable.

Luke yelled with pain. ‘Who’s doing that?’

‘He’s about five ten, white as snow, and pissed off,’ said Hans. ‘Who’s supplying you with Spook?’

‘No one,’ said Luke.

Joe didn’t wait for the nod this time; he drew back his foot and launched it into Luke’s ribs. Kicking him in the stomach would have driven the wind and words out of him; the ribs would keep him nicely motivated.

‘Who supplies the Spook?’ said Hans.

‘No one,’ said Luke, his eyes roving the room, his face contorted in pain.

Th