Ghost of a Chance g-1 Page 3

  “Hello,” he said, his voice surprisingly kind. “Can you tell me your name?”

  The ghost looked surprised for a moment, as though being asked to remember something that really wasn’t important any more. “Muriel,” she said finally. Her voice sounded perfectly normal. “Muriel Foster. Yes. I don’t . . . I don’t quite remember how I got here. My memory isn’t what it was . . . Don’t get old, young man. No-one ever tells you how much hard work it is, being old.”

  “Muriel . . .”

  “I shouldn’t be here, should I? There’s somewhere else I ought to be. I feel . . . like I’ve been dreaming, and now it’s time to wake up.”

  “That’s right, Muriel,” said JC. “It’s time for you to go on. To the place appointed for you, where there is no old age, and all old things are made new again.”

  “Yes,” said Muriel. “I’d like that.”

  “Can you hear the thunder all around us?”

  “Of course; I’m not deaf, you know.”

  “All you have to do is walk towards the thunder,” said JC. “Just . . . keep walking. And all of this will be over.”

  Muriel looked at him sharply. “There’s something you’re not telling me. I may be old, young man, but I’m not stupid. Tell me this; this thing you want me to do . . . Is it necessary? Does it matter?”

  “Yes,” said JC. “It will save a great many lives.”

  “Good,” said Muriel, drawing herself up. “It’s been a long time since I’ve had the opportunity to do something that mattered.”

  She nodded briefly to JC and walked steadily out of the light and into the dark. Happy and Melody looked disbelievingly at JC, but he merely looked after Muriel. There was a moment, as though something incredibly powerful was holding its breath; and then, instantaneously, the Presence was gone. The car park was back again, the lights shone brightly, the stars were back in the sky, and the moon was just a moon.

  Happy made a sound, deep in his throat, and rose to his feet. JC turned to look at him.

  “How are you feeling, Happy?”

  “Never mind me; what did you just do? She trusted you, JC! And you sacrificed her to the Presence!”

  “Of course I didn’t,” said JC. “What kind of person do you take me for?”

  “Right now, we’re not too sure,” said Melody. “Perhaps you’d better explain it for us. Bearing in mind that if I don’t like what I hear, I still have this gun.”

  “It’s really quite simple,” said JC, patiently. “The Presence depended on live sacrifices. They were the source of its power. And I fed it a ghost, a dead woman with not a spark of life left in her. Nothing actually there for the Presence to feed on. Essentially, we gave the Presence a really bad case of spiritual indigestion. It couldn’t consume dear Muriel, so she passed on to her reward . . . and with her gone, the haunting’s focal point was removed. The link between Past and Present was broken, and the Presence went home crying. An elegant solution to a tricky problem, I think you’ll agree.”

  Happy and Melody looked at each other.

  “I nearly had a coronary,” said Happy.

  “Me too,” said Melody.

  “You hit him first, you’re closest,” said Happy.

  “After you,” said Melody.

  “Look,” said JC. “The sun’s coming up.”

  They looked. It was. Spreading out across the horizon, in long streamers of glowing red and gold, pushing back the dark, breathing life into the world.

  “Come, children,” said JC. “Back to the hotel, and breakfast is on me. Who’s for a good fry-up?”

  “Can I take some of my pills now?” said Happy.

  “Why not?” said JC.

  TWO

  THE SCARIEST PLACE ON EARTH

  Buckingham Palace is a big place, with a lot of rooms. State-rooms, living-rooms, exhibition rooms. Room for everyone and everything; including a few very specialised institutions that shouldn’t need to exist but unfortunately do. Tucked away behind locked doors and closed-off corridors, the Carnacki Institute has been based in Buck House for many years, under many names. It has always been a Royal Prerogative, rather than a government department, because ghosts are far too important to be entrusted to the whims of transitory politicians. Hell, most of them don’t even know the Carnacki Institute exists. Her Majesty the Queen decides whether or not to tell each new Prime Minister, as they come to office. Some cope better than others. No-one ever talks about the Missing Prime Minister of 1888, whose entire existence had to be removed from the history books.

  The Carnacki Institute takes its responsibilities very seriously, and sometimes, entirely ruthlessly. It comes with the job.

  The Institute was first convened in 1587, the result of a Royal Charter from Queen Elizabeth I. Consequently, all operatives are answerable only to the head of the Institute and the reigning monarch. Either of whom can order any operative killed at any time. This ensures security, honesty, and integrity, and helps motivate everyone to do the very best.

  The Carnacki Institute is a job for life, however long that might be.

  * * *

  JC, Happy, and Melody waited unhappily in a small room at the back of Buckingham Palace, at the end of a corridor that doesn’t officially exist. They’d barely stepped off the train back from the West Country, exhausted and hollow-eyed and running on fumes, when all their mobile phones went off at once, summoning them to Buck House to meet with the Boss of the Carnacki Institute. Passing travellers were briefly disturbed by a flurry of foul language, not a little brandishing of fists, and a few bitter tears. Normally, it was understood that field agents were entitled to at least a month’s downtime between missions, to prevent them burning out. To be called back in this abruptly meant something seriously bad was in the wind.

  Either a new and very urgent case . . . or the Boss had finally found out what the three of them got up to between cases, and they were all in real trouble. The Boss tended to take a very dim view of those necessarily private pleasures and distractions that made a field agent’s life bearable; so the agents went to great pains to make sure she never found out about them. They didn’t want to worry her. JC and Happy and Melody made their way across London in silence, really hoping it was merely a dangerous new mission.

  And now here they were, sitting in the outer office, waiting to be called in to what people in the know considered the scariest place on earth.

  Like most of Buckingham Palace, the Boss’s outer office was always kept that little bit warmer than it really needed to be; and the recirculated air in that small, windowless room was giving JC a headache and a seriously dry mouth. It was either that or the stark terror. JC had learned to deal with ghosts and revenants and demons; but the Boss was another matter. He looked around the office, hoping for something interesting to take his mind off the horrors to come, but there really wasn’t much to look at. Only a brutally efficient desk for the Boss’s secretary, typing happily away as though she didn’t have a care in the world, the heartless cow, and a half a dozen visitors’ chairs of such blatant discomfort that they had to have been designed that way to keep the visitors in a properly respectful frame of mind.

  There were the portraits on the walls. Dozens of them, covering all four walls, no room even for a clock or a calendar. Portraits of past field agents who had covered themselves with glory, if not renown. Only the Institute knew what its agents did to protect Humanity from the Outer Forces, and it didn’t even tell itself unless it needed to know. Officially, these portraits were always referred to as the Honoured Members. Field agents more usually referred to them as the Honoured Dead because no field agent ever expected to die of old age. Most didn’t even make it to their midlife crises.

  The oldest portraits on the walls were only that—paintings in various styles from various periods, often by artists with famous names and reputations. Which is why there are unexplained gaps in certain artists’ careers. The clothes in the portraits changed with the passing fashions, but the faces all had
the same look. Hard-used, heroic, haunted. Unsmiling faces, with eyes that had seen things they could never forget. After the paintings came photographs, from the first daguerreotypes to sepia prints, to the sharp digital images of today. Men and women who had gone down into Hell and kicked arse, for no other reward than knowing it was a job that needed doing. No medals, no honours, and sometimes not even a body for the funeral. The job was its own reward.

  The faces in the portraits were different every time JC was summoned to the outer office. He didn’t know who was in charge of rotating them, or even if there was any significance in the choices. He half suspected the portraits chose their own positions.

  JC sat easily on his stiff-backed chair, his cream suit immaculate as always, and did his best to project an air of unconcerned nonchalance. With a touch of insolence. Never let your enemies think they’ve got you worried. And, having searched his conscience all across London, although the prospect of meeting the Boss in person frankly unnerved him, as it did everyone . . . he really wasn’t that worried. He hadn’t done anything too terrible, recently, and he was confident in his ability to talk his way out of any lesser charges.

  Happy, on the other hand, was not looking at all well. He sat bolt upright on his inflexible chair, looking guilty and put-upon in equal measure. His hands were clasped tightly together in his lap, to keep them from trembling too obviously, sweat beaded on his high forehead, and he’d developed a small but definite twitch in one eye. At least he hadn’t started whimpering yet. Typical of Happy; always convinced that the Universe was out to get him. Of course, in this job, sometimes it was. Or the Boss; which was just as bad.

  The seriously heavy-duty wards preventing him from using his telepathic abilities probably weren’t helping. Happy always described the experience as enduring the hangover without having first enjoyed the drunk.

  Melody was playing the latest version of Doom on her phone and giving it her entire concentration; apparently completely impervious to the demands and dangers of the everyday world. Melody really didn’t care much about the ordinary world, except when it interfered with her personal needs and interests. And she was never happier than when she had a new toy to play with. Only someone who knew her really well would have detected the sullen anger coiled and waiting in her tense muscles. Melody’s first impulse was always to fight. With her tech, her knowledge, or a really big gun. She always played to win, or at the very least to go down with her teeth buried in an enemy’s throat.

  Happy cracked first. He turned abruptly in his seat and glared at JC. “This is all your fault!”

  “Really?” said JC. He made a point of relaxing even further in his chair, so that he seemed positively boneless. “And how, pray, is this my fault? Considering that we haven’t even been told what we’ve been called in for yet.”

  “Because it always is your fault!” said Happy.

  “He has a point,” said Melody, not looking up from her computer game. “Always first through the doors, always first into the thick of things, and dragging us along behind you. With us usually yelling Can we please talk about this first? Remember Harroby Hall?”

  “I thought we’d all agreed that the Harroby Hall situation was not my fault,” said JC, with quiet dignity. “Neither of you noticed anything out of the usual either. How were we supposed to know the house was the haunting, and not the people? That the extremely unfortunate Price family were in fact living in the ghost of a house that had burned down thirty years before? It’s not as if any of your precious instruments detected anything, did they, Melody dear? Still, since we’re so happily reminiscing, perhaps we could share some precious memories of the Case of the Glasgow Bogle? When you assured me that the Bogle was, in fact, entirely harmless? Hmm?”

  “Well it was,” Melody muttered defensively. “Right up until Happy provoked it.”

  “Oh right, blame me!” said Happy. “Why do I always get the blame?”

  “Because you deserve it,” snapped Melody, crushingly. “Remember the Phantom Bugler of Warwick-on-Sea?”

  Happy sniffed, stuck out his lower lip sulkily, and wouldn’t meet her eyes. “How was I supposed to know it wasn’t a bugle? I’ve led a very sheltered life. Or at least, I did, right up until I got drafted into this bloody organisation. I can feel one of my heads coming on.”

  “Children, children,” murmured JC. “Let us not discuss our personal failings while the enemy is listening.”

  They all looked across at the Boss’s secretary, Heather. She smiled sweetly upon them without slowing her typing for a moment. Heather (if she had a last name no-one knew it, for all sorts of security reasons) was the perfect secretary. Knew everything, said nothing; or at least, nothing that mattered. Calm, professional, and pleasantly pretty, in a blonde curly-haired round-faced sort of way, Heather dressed neatly rather than fashionably; and as the Boss’s last line of defence, she was probably the most-heavily-armed person in Buck House. Supposedly, Heather was equipped to take down a whole army of terrorists, if necessary, and certainly no-one felt like testing the rumour. You had to get past Heather to get to the Boss, and unless you had exactly the right kind of paperwork, signed and countersigned in all the right places, that wasn’t going to happen. JC once saw Heather kick an overpresumptuous Parliamentary UnderSecretary so hard in the balls that half the faces in the portraits winced.

  That JC was still prepared to try to charm and wheedle information out of her showed how nervous he really was.

  “Heather, my darling . . . looking ravishing as always, of course; might I inquire . . . ?”

  “No, JC, my darling, you might not,” said Heather, kindly but immovably. “The Boss will see you when she is ready to see you and not one moment before. All I can tell you . . . is that the Boss is really not a happy bunny this morning.”

  JC raised an eyebrow. “Is she ever?”

  “Sorry,” said Heather. “That falls under Classified Information.”

  “Come on, Heather,” said Happy, giving his best shot at an ingratiating smile. “Can’t you at least tell us what we’ve done wrong this time? I mean, how deep in it are we?”

  Heather smiled sweetly at him. “Do you possess a pair of waders? Or perhaps scuba gear?”

  “Situation normal, then,” said Melody, going back to her game.

  “Oh God,” said Happy, burying his face in his hands.

  “Told you not to shoot that albatross,” said JC. “Now brace up, man. We’ve been here before and made it out the other side. If we were in serious trouble, Heather would have shot us the moment we walked through the door.”

  “You might think that;” Heather murmured, “I couldn’t possibly comment.”

  Happy moaned briefly, then produced half a dozen bottles of pills from various pockets. He rolled them back and forth in his hands, considering the multi-coloured contents, and squinting at the handwritten labels.

  “Now . . . These yellow ones are to remind me to take these red ones . . . And the blue ones are only for use in cases of possession. These stripey ones are for radiation exposure, the hundreds and thousands are for my mood swings, and these chequered ones . . . are to give me a better outlook on life.”

  “Trust me, those aren’t working,” said Melody. She glared at him sharply. “I thought we were weaning you off those things. So many pills can’t be good for you. It’s a wonder to me you don’t rattle when you cough.”

  “I need a little something, now and again, to help keep me stable,” Happy said defensively. “I’ve got to do something to keep the voices quiet.”

  Melody sniffed loudly. “If this is stable, I’d hate to see you when you weren’t. Forget stable, Happy, that horse bolted long ago. Why not settle for coherent?”

  “You’re being mean now,” said Happy. “I wonder what these violet ones are for . . . ?”

  “You have no idea what half that stuff will do to you, in the long term,” insisted Melody. “Have you even considered the side effects, or the cumulative effects?”

>   “I read all the little leaflets that come with the pills, very thoroughly,” said Happy.

  “Yeah,” said JC. “Looking for loopholes.”

  Happy knocked back a yellow and two reds. JC took a purple, just to keep him company.

  The intercom on Heather’s desk buzzed officiously. Heather stopped typing to listen to something only she could hear, then nodded briskly to JC, Happy, and Melody.

  “In you go, 007, 8, and 9. The Boss is ready to see you now.”

  “How come no-one ever asks if we’re ready to see her?” growled Happy. He hiccuped, then smiled suddenly. “Oooh . . . They’re kicking in fast today . . .”

  JC and Melody took a firm hold on his arms and headed him towards the heavily reinforced steel door that led to the Boss.

  * * *

  The current Boss of the Carnacki Institute was Catherine Latimer. She sat commandingly behind her Hepplewhite desk, while the three field agents arranged themselves untidily before her. She gestured sharply at the three chairs set out in front of the desk, and the trio immediately sat down, like school pupils called before their headmistress, for crimes not yet made clear. JC and Melody did their best to look contrite; Happy didn’t have the knack.

  Catherine Latimer had to be in her late seventies but was still almost unnaturally strong and vital. Medium height, stocky, grey hair cropped short in a bowl cut, her face was all hard edges and cold eyes. She wore a smartly tailored grey suit, without a flash of colour anywhere, and smoked black Turkish cigarettes in a long, ivory holder; an affectation from her student days in Cam-bridge. (There were long-standing rumours that she’d made some kind of Deal with Someone, in her college days, but no-one had ever been able to prove anything.)

  Every day she sent agents out on missions that could lead to their deaths, or worse. If it bothered her, she hid it really well. But every agent knew that if they fell in the field, she would move heaven and earth to avenge them.

  JC always thought of her as the last of the Bulldog Breed. But only to himself, and never in her presence. He didn’t think she could actually read minds, but he didn’t feel like taking the chance.