Lil cut a lonely figure in the corridor of Peligan City Hospital, sitting on a chair with torn covers and foam bursting out of the seams. She had told the hospital administrator that Abe was her father so they let her stay with him, but they had insisted on calling her mother in anyway. They said she needed a responsible adult to take her home and Mandrel wasn’t in any fit state. So now Lil was waiting, sipping stewed tea from a polystyrene cup and trying not to breathe in the smell that haunts all hospitals: disinfectant and boiled carrots.
She hadn’t seen Nedly since they left the Mingo. His encounter with the apparition on the stairwell had disturbed him all right; he had said it was someone like him, a ghost. Only, this ghost bothered Lil because it wasn’t like him; this ghost could do all sorts of things that Nedly couldn’t, and this ghost had tried to kill someone – probably had killed people already. As far as Lil could see, the Firebug ghost was a very dangerous kettle of fish indeed, and he had seen Nedly, and now Nedly was alone, and who knew where?
Lil’s mum arrived in an uncharacteristically animated state: breathless, with wild eyes and excitable hair.
‘Thank the stars you’re all right,’ she gasped, spinning Lil round and checking her over. Her gaze flitted from her blackened face and dusty hair to her once bright yellow mac now grey with soot. ‘You could have been burnt to a crisp!’
‘I’m fine,’ Lil insisted. ‘Sorry they called you out of work.’
Naomi gave her a furious look for a moment, and then all the energy seemed to abandon her. She slumped down wearily on one of the half-eviscerated chairs beside Lil.
‘I don’t understand what you were doing there.’
‘I was helping Abe with a case,’ Lil said matter-of-factly.
‘A case!’ Naomi shook her head. ‘How do you two even know each other?’
‘I looked him up.’ Lil shrugged. ‘Anyway, I thought he was a friend of yours. I found a photograph of you two together. From the “good old days”, the ones that you don’t like to talk about,’ she added ominously.
‘Where exactly did you find the photograph?’
Lil shrugged guiltily. ‘It was just stuck inside an old book.’
Naomi narrowed her eyes into slices. ‘And where, exactly, did you find this book?’
‘Somewhere in a box …’ Lil mumbled, feeling hot. It felt like her mum had been working on a Penetrating Squint of her own so Lil was relieved when she got distracted by the sight of Matron Fry striding purposefully down the corridor towards them, carrying a pile of carefully folded but filthy-looking clothes in her arms. Matron Fry was heavy on the hips and her ash-blonde curls were flashed with grey. Her cheeks dimpled as she gave them a coral-coloured lipstick smile. ‘Won’t be long now. I’ll tell him that you’re waiting. That might cheer him up,’ she added doubtfully.
She knocked sharply on the door across the hall and then flung it open. There followed the metallic whirr of a hospital curtain being yanked back, an affronted yelp and the scuffling sounds of someone tugging at bed sheets.
‘Have you never heard of giving a person some privacy?’ they heard Abe yell.
‘Now, now, Mr Mandrel,’ Matron Fry replied. ‘There’s no need to be shy. You haven’t got anything I haven’t seen a hundred times before. It’s not my fault you decided to sit there in your underpants.’
‘What did you expect me to wear?’ Abe growled. ‘All they left me with is this flimsy dress!’
‘That’s a hospital gown, Mr Mandrel. Everyone wears them here. Now, you have a couple of folks outside who have been asking after you. Can I let them in?’
‘Can I get dressed first?’
Matron Fry stepped back out into the corridor. ‘I’d like to have kept him in for some observation,’ she explained to Lil’s mum.
Lil heard Abe mutter something like, ‘I bet you would!’
‘But he is stubborn,’ the matron continued. She smiled and shrugged her shoulders as if to say: What can you do?
As the door swung slowly shut behind her, Lil caught a glimpse of Abe sitting glumly on the edge of the bed, wrapped in a light blue sheet, his arms pale against his red and soot-darkened extremities. He was still wearing his battered trilby, now also singed at the edges, and for the first time Lil saw the brown-leather strap that encircled his forearm and fastened his Swiss Army hand to the stump at the end of his wrist.
The door clicked shut and the matron lowered her voice. ‘The truth is we can’t keep him here if he doesn’t want to stay, and we don’t really have any free beds anyway so …’ She tailed off, looking down the corridor with disappointment.
A moment later she gave another sharp knock on the door and peered in. She turned back to Lil and her mother. ‘You can go in now.’
Abe stood by the bed in his blackened and ragged suit. When he saw who was waiting with Lil he looked taken aback.
‘Naomi!’ He just about breathed the word out.
‘Abe. It’s been a while,’ Lil’s mum said warmly.
‘Good to see you.’
‘You too, Abe. You look … well.’ She flashed him a smile for old times’ sake.
‘I’ve been better.’ Abe’s cheeks coloured as he hurriedly tucked in and smoothed down his shirt and straightened his tie. He took off his hat and ran a hand through his hair. ‘I don’t normally look as bad as this – it was the fire.’
Lil snorted.
The matron turned to Abe. ‘We just need to get the paperwork signed off, and then you can go. You’ve suffered a bit of smoke inhalation and some minor burns, so you should take it easy for a couple of days.’
‘I’ve had worse,’ Abe said gruffly, reaching into his mac pocket and pulling out his prosthetic hand. He clicked it into place and gave it an appraising look. The fingertips had grown spoon-like where the heat of the fire melted them.
‘Come on,’ said Naomi. ‘I’ll give you a hand with the forms. Lil, could you get us a couple of coffees?’
Over at the nurse’s station Abe furiously ticked his way through a pile of release forms. Naomi leant beside him, one elbow propped against the counter.
‘Still making enemies, Abe?’
He snorted grimly. ‘Someone wants me out of the picture. I seem to have ruffled some feathers with your friends down at City Hall.’
They watched Lil at the drinks machine emptying her pockets for change.
‘Looks like you had help.’ Naomi gave him a stern look. ‘It seems my daughter has been spending a lot of time with you.’
‘She’s a good kid.’
‘I know.’
Lil was flipping one of the coins in the air while the machine dispensed the coffee into polystyrene cups.
‘Chip off the old block, eh?’
‘She doesn’t know about my past, Abe, and I’d prefer it if it stayed that way. I don’t want her involved. We both know where it leads.’ She acknowledged his nod with a single word. ‘McNair.’
Abe said, ‘Good luck with that. She’s too much like you.’
‘She doesn’t think so.’
‘You should tell her.’ Abe finished the last form and tapped the pile together.
Naomi bit her bottom lip thoughtfully. ‘It was good to see you again, Abe, but it has to end here. Whatever it is you’re involved in, keep Lil out of it. She doesn’t need any help getting into trouble; she’s always managed that well enough by herself, and things are complicated at the moment so …’
At that moment Lil advanced on them with a ‘Hey!’ and two coffees. She took one look at Abe’s grim hangdog face and asked, ‘Are you OK?’
He winced, gave his chest a good punch and Lil a battered smile. ‘Bit of heartburn, that’s all.’ His eyes went down to his half-melted old shoes.
‘Thanks for the coffee.’ Naomi downed hers in two and took control of the situation. She held out her arm. ‘Have you got a ride home, Abe?’
Abe was rubbing the toe of his shoe on the back of his trouser leg, trying to magic up a shine. ‘Don’t worry about me,’ he said. ‘I’ll be all right. I’m parked up below.’
‘Well, I’ll see you down to your car. Lil, meet me in the car park in five.’
Abe shuffled out, holding on to Naomi for support, like a bear leaning on a meerkat.
‘They don’t make them like that any more,’ said the matron, as soon as they were out of earshot.
Lil pulled a face, but Matron Fry looked genuinely wistful. ‘I remember him from way back in the day. I was just a junior nurse then and he was quite the hero. The Scourge of the Underworld, they called him. Oh, times are hard I know, but he’s still got that look in his eye.’ She smiled and the rosy apples of her cheeks pushed her eyes into twinkling blue crescents. ‘He needs a good home-cooked meal. Does he have anyone special?’
‘No,’ Lil said, glancing down out of the window into the car park where she could see her mum and Abe talking under the light of a street lamp. ‘He’s been on his own a long while, I think. I look out for him, though,’ she added protectively.
‘I heard he hooked up with some hot-shot reporter way back when.’
‘Maybe.’ Lil shrugged. ‘I don’t know him that well.’
The matron gave her a wink. ‘It would have been before your time, honey pie.’
Under the unforgiving orange lights of the Peligan City Hospital car park Abe struggled to get the door of the Zodiac open, and then had to grab at it quickly as whatever metallic thread it hung by seemed to snap and the door dropped by five inches.
Naomi watched him appraisingly. ‘Do you think it’s true – that you were the fourth intended victim of the Firebug Killer?’
‘I hope not,’ Abe said, grimly hoisting the door back into place. ‘That would blow my theory right out of the window.’ He eased himself into the driver’s seat. ‘I better go.’ His throat was tight and his voice had grown thick. ‘Take care of yourself, Naomi.’
He closed the door and pulled down the sunshield. The key dropped into his lap and then so did the shield itself. Abe threw it onto the back seat, and clenched and unclenched his jaw.
Naomi tapped on the window. ‘Abe.’ She hesitated while he stared fixedly ahead. ‘About Lil …’ But she was cut short when Lil caught up with them.
‘Bye for now!’ Lil called to Abe through the glass.
He started the car on the third attempt and pulled away. It cut out just before he exited the car park and then started again with a cloud of black smoke and disappeared from sight.
‘Does he have somewhere to go?’ asked Naomi.
Lil watched the ‘No Exit’ sign re-emerge from the engine smog. ‘I hope so.’
As Lil’s mum went to fetch the Datsun a sudden feeling of terrible dread swept over Lil. She shivered and slowly turned to see Nedly standing right behind her.
‘There you are! Where did you go? I was getting worried; you shouldn’t just disappear like that,’ she scolded him and then noticed how wide and dark his eyes were looking. ‘You OK?’
‘I just needed some time to myself, to, you know, think about stuff.’ He paused. ‘By stuff, I mean that ghost. If only we could find out who he is …’
‘Or was.’ Lil pulled out her notepad and began flicking through the pages. ‘You might be right. According to my notes the ghost you saw had a scar that ran from his mouth down to his neck. That’s pretty distinctive. We might have a chance to track him down, find out why he’s doing this.’ She paused for a moment to chew on her pencil and then blew out a splinter of wood. ‘But there was something else about him, you said – there was something familiar. You think you knew him?’
‘No.’ Nedly blanched. ‘I just, maybe, I don’t know. I could have seen his picture somewhere I suppose, except … There’s one other thing. He looked like he knew me too – when he saw me he stopped laughing and his face looked, I don’t know, sad.’
‘Maybe it was because you’re a ghost too?’
‘Yeah, maybe.’ He looked off towards the visitor’s car park; a plaintive whine sounded in the distance, heralding the approach of her mum’s Datsun.
Lil sighed. ‘Now what do we do? I mean, we know that the person who torched Abe’s apartment is a ghost but I’ll never be able to convince Abe he’s being haunted. And we don’t even know for sure that the ghost is the Firebug Killer, the one who’s been going after the Lucan Road Mob and the doctor at the prison, though it would explain the lack of evidence and the near impossible nature of the crimes. It all fits, but Abe’s never going to buy into it without some kind of proof.’ She chewed off the end of her pencil and spat it on to the ground. ‘You know, it would be so much easier if he could see you.’
‘You’re telling me!’
‘If only there was some way.’
The Datsun’s headlights appeared as Naomi Potkin turned out of the car park and began edging along the road, looking for Lil.
Nedly thought for a moment and then said, ‘It’s time.’
‘To go?’
‘To tell Abe, about me.’
Lil winced. ‘I’m not sure that’s a good idea.’
‘He needs to know. Someone is after him, someone like me. We don’t know why, but maybe he does. He’s a target and we’re withholding information. You have to tell him.’
‘He won’t believe me.’
‘I’ll convince him,’ said Nedly with something close to an air of confidence. ‘I’ve been working on some moves.’