The next morning the Klaxon ran the story on the front page:
Firebug Killer:
Failed Attempt on Fourth Victim?
Private Investigator Absolom ‘Abe’ Mandrel narrowly escaped a fiery death last night when his rooms at the Flamingo Hotel on Shoe Street were set ablaze. The official line from the PC Fire Department is that this is just another case of faulty wiring and is not being viewed as suspicious.
Earlier this week three other victims – nurse Shirley Kreutz, security guard Antonio McConkey and prison doctor Hans Carvel – were all killed while alone and in confined spaces when the mysterious fires took hold.
But why was Mandrel targeted and who is behind these attacks? Blaming a lack of forensic evidence and witness testimonies, the authorities are reluctant to connect the dots and draw any conclusions in this case.
A whole day went by before Abe was allowed back into the remains of Hawaiian Island Suite Three. ‘You didn’t have to come with me, you know,’ he grumbled at Lil. ‘It’s late and there’s not much here worth saving. I could have taken care of it myself.’ He plonked himself down on a burnt chair, which collapsed under his weight and then he sat on the floor, too angry to speak.
After a moment or two he stood up, feeling the seat of his trousers. ‘Everything is dripping wet! Those crummy, two-bit sprinklers, they didn’t put out the fire until all my stuff was destroyed anyway. Now anything that wasn’t burnt to a crisp already is soaking. All my worldly goods …’
‘Yeah.’ Lil tried to keep some sincerity in her voice. ‘And you had some really nice stuff too.’ She looked at the charred remains of the Hawaiian sunset prints that were miraculously still hanging on the wall.
‘And now I’m back to square one because first the doc got iced – well, consumed by fire – and now it looks like I’m on the Firebug Killer’s list too, so it’s not just the Lucan Road Mob he’s after, and my theory is all wrong. The cases are connected in some other way, something I’ve missed, or maybe they’re not connected at all. Now I’ll never find Ramon LeTeef and bring him to justice.’ He pulled up a warped metal bar stool and sat holding his head in his hands.
Lil gave his shoulder an encouraging pat. ‘Yeah you will. I believe in you.’
Abe looked up at her with bloodshot eyes. ‘Then you’re a bigger schmuck than I am.’ He let his head fall onto the sticky black surface of the counter. ‘You’ve got me all wrong, kid. I’m just a nobody, living in the past. Does your mother know you’re here?’
Lil ignored the question. ‘Stop feeling sorry for yourself, Abe. You’ve got bigger fish to fry. Look, the Klaxon says you’re the fourth intended victim of the Firebug Killer but I think they’re wrong: you’re actually the fifth. If my theory is correct, the Firebug Killer also tried to set fire to the mayor of Peligan City. Last Friday Mum came home smelling of burnt fleece. She said that there had been a fire at City Hall and she’d had to use the mayor’s sheepskin jacket to put it out.’
Abe didn’t move. She was talking to the top of his hat; the brim was folded back at the front and the band was barely clinging on to his head.
‘So, he must have been right there where the fire was,’ Lil continued. ‘So, maybe the connection is between you, the nurse, Dr Carvel, the mayor and the exploded guard. Someone you have all wronged in the past, someone alive or dead who might have it in for you?’
Abe peeled his face off the counter; the soot had left a smear across his forehead. ‘I used to be the Scourge of the Underworld, remember. Plenty of people alive and dead have it in for me – though I’m only really concerned with the “alive” ones.’
Lil looked him straight in the eye. ‘That’s where you’re going wrong. It’s the other kind you need to worry about.’ She took a deep breath; it was time to come clean. Nedly gave her an encouraging nod. ‘I’ve got a witness who can describe the Firebug, but there’s something I need to tell you first. Come on, I better fix you a drink. You’ll need one.’
They got the service lift down to the basement. Abe unlocked the first door they came to and fumbled for the light switch. ‘Welcome to my new digs,’ he said despondently.
The Ocean View Room had no windows. The breeze-block walls were painted deep blue and peppered with occasional orange blobs, and there was a stuffed toy octopus lounging across the pillow on the camp bed in the corner. A naked bulb hung on a long wire just above a blotchy-looking shaving mirror, and that was the only source of light apart from the rows of blue and green fairground bulbs that had been strung along the ceiling, giving the room an eerie underwater glow. It smelt of damp and there was a persistent dripping sound coming from some pipes that ran up the wall.
‘I think Mr Teryaki made this room up,’ grumbled Abe. ‘I don’t remember any Ocean View Room before. It looks like some kind of basement storage area. There are cupboards over there with cleaning supplies in and the other two suites on this floor are called the Laundry Room and the Utility Room. I can hear a furnace roaring all through the night and I have to use the bathroom on the next floor.’
‘Well, it could be worse,’ said Lil brightly, wondering if it could be, really.
She turned her back to examine one of the orange blobs, which turned out to be a hastily painted fish, and murmured to Nedly out of the corner of her mouth. ‘Are you sure about this? It’s nearly show time.’
He gulped nervously. ‘I’m ready.’
Lil brewed up a couple of teas from a small travel kettle on a tray in the corner; she made one with two bags and then added three fingers of sugar.
‘Abe, I think you should sit down.’
He unfolded a red-and-white-striped deck-chair, propped it up and then gingerly lowered himself into it until he was reclined at an uncomfortably laidback angle. Lil added another two fingers of sugar to his tea and gave it a brisk stir. ‘Now, what I’m going to say will shock you. It might make you question the very meaning of your own existence and what comes after it.’
Abe snorted. Lil passed him the mug and then, cradling her own tea, she pulled up another deck-chair and sat down facing him.
‘Do you remember you asked me once how I knew that the Ned Stubbs case was –’ she lowered her voice – ‘a murder investigation? Well, the reason I know is …’ She paused. ‘Because he told me.’
‘Who did?’
‘Ned Stubbs told me.’
Abe let out a gruff snigger. ‘Ned Stubbs told you he had been murdered? And you believed him?’
‘I know this is hard for you to understand, Abe, but I can see him. The ghost of Ned Stubbs is here now, in this room.’
Abe took a sip of tea and then spat it straight out in a sticky brown spray.
‘This must be a shock, I know, but …’
‘Gah!’ Abe interrupted. ‘How much sugar is in this?’
‘Just enough, I hope. Did you hear the bit about the ghost?’
‘What ghost?’
Lil gritted her teeth impatiently. ‘The ghost of Ned Stubbs.’
‘You’re saying that the ghost of Ned Stubbs appeared to you and told you he had been murdered and asked you to help him solve the case?’
‘Yes!’ Lil cried. ‘That’s exactly it. And what’s more, he’s here now.’
Abe knocked his prosthetic hand three times on the concrete floor. ‘Whoooh! Is there anybody there?’
The fairground bulbs flickered, on and off and the air in the basement turned icy cool. The kettle on the stool began to rattle and then the whole tray flipped into the air and clattered to the floor. In the dim light Abe’s face turned pale green. He took another gulp of his tea without even wincing and then patted down his pockets for a handkerchief and, not finding one, wiped the cold sweat from his brow with his tie.
It took him a moment to recover but as the fear gradually drained away, it left behind something that looked a lot like disappointment. He shook his head at Lil.
‘That’s some trick, kid.’
‘It’s not a trick!’ she protested. She gave Nedly the nod and then cried, ‘Look!’ and pointed as the shaving mirror beneath the flickering light fogged up with an invisible breath that spread out like a mushroom cloud. The toothpaste mug on the shelf below began to rock back and forth and then, with a squeaking sound, a clear spot appeared on the mist, like a full stop.
Abe was frowning. ‘What is that?’
‘Come on, Nedly!’ Lil hissed under her breath. She could see him desperately trying to focus his energy on one trembling fingertip.
Abe stood up and moved towards the mirror. The dot grew a thin and shaky tail. It looked like a balloon on a string. ‘What does that mean?’ He peered at it, confused. Nedly slunk back.
‘Is that it?’ Lil mouthed at Nedly.
‘It’s hard to do it under pressure,’ he moaned. ‘I’m not used to having an audience.’
‘Isn’t that the whole point?’ She rolled her eyes. ‘Great!’ Folding her arms and sitting back in the deck-chair she added, ‘You’ve blown it.’
Abe looked at her quizzically. ‘Are you talking to me?’
Nedly glowered at Lil. He gritted his teeth and strode back up to the mirror and then raised his finger up to the glass.
Abe seemed to sense his presence and stepped away. From where she was sitting Lil could see the hairs on the back of his neck rise. There was a squeak on the glass and the dot spread, becoming a hyphen. Lil sat forward urging Nedly on with her eyes. Abe pushed a shaking finger round his shirt collar.
The hyphen gained two vertical lines and became an ‘H’.
A minute later a second line appeared beside it and then Nedly collapsed, exhausted.
‘Hi?’ Abe said. ‘Hi?’
‘He’s saying “hi”,’ Lil explained.
‘Thank you, Einstein,’ Abe growled. ‘I can read it. I’m just trying to work out how you did it.’
‘Grrrr!’ Lil clenched her fists, exasperated. ‘What more proof do you need?’
Abe coughed and adjusted his tie. When he finally spoke his voice was husky.
‘You maybe think because I’m getting on a bit, and maybe I like the sauce too much, you can have a laugh on me.’
‘I’m not laughing, Abe.’
‘Well, neither am I.’ Abe swiped his mug from the table and drank a large gulp. Then he sat back in the deck-chair, which collapsed, spilling the last of the tea down his shirt. He swore as he tried mopping it up with his tie. Then he sighed and lay back on the floor.
Lil tried out some sympathy. ‘Look, I know it’s a lot to take in but we think …’
‘You and this ghost?’ Abe didn’t get up; he just lay there defeated, staring at the ceiling.
‘Me and the ghost of Ned Stubbs. Nedly,’ she corrected. ‘We think it makes perfect sense. That’s why the police didn’t find any forensic evidence, why there were no witnesses – because the Firebug is a ghost!’
‘Really.’ Abe tipped back his hat with one finger.
Lil gaped at him. ‘You don’t believe me?’
‘Would you believe you?’ He clambered to his feet and kicked the unreliable deck-chair out of the way. ‘You may have got me spooked in the beginning, but I’m all over that now.’
‘You think I’m lying?’ Lil glared at him, her lips puckered in a scowl. ‘Well, isn’t that nice? It so happened that a ghost saved your life yesterday, or did you think you got out of there all by yourself?’ She spat the words out in Mandrel’s face, pointing an accusatory finger for emphasis. ‘You were out for the count, remember?’ She shook her head scornfully.
Abe flinched back with a bruised look, but Lil was too furious to stop.
‘You know what – I think we’ve spent just about enough time on you. I’m going to walk out of here in a minute and solve the Ned Stubbs case with or without you, but before I do you should know who’s after you, because it might just save your life.’ She paused and sucked in a breath. ‘The ghost we saw just before the fire, the one who is trying to kill you, he had blonde hair and a large scar that runs down from his mouth and covers his neck.’
The detective snorted in disbelief. He started shaking his head but then something occurred to him and he narrowed his eyes sceptically.
Lil widened hers. ‘You know who it is!’
‘You’ve just described Leonard Owl.’
‘Never heard of him.’ She looked over at Nedly who shrugged back in the negative.
‘Then you’ve probably seen a picture somewhere. He was before your time. Owl died in the fire at Rorschach, more than ten years ago, and no one has heard a peep from him since. I doubt that he has suddenly decided to rise up from the grave to go on a killing spree, but if –’ he over-emphasised the word – ‘if he had, why would I be on his list?’
‘You tell me.’
‘You know so much all of sudden, why don’t you tell me?’
Lil shrugged. ‘Did you arrest him?’
Abe shook his head. ‘He handed himself in. He wasn’t much older than you when he confessed to burning the family estate to the ground. That’s how he got that terrible scar: he went back in to save his pet goldfish from the flames. I mean, sure, he was dangerous and unbalanced, but the fire was a compulsion – he never meant to hurt anyone.’
‘Maybe he’s changed?’ Lil suggested. ‘It’s worth checking out, though, isn’t it? It makes sense that Owl is the perpetrator; a ghost can come and go almost without a trace, walk through locked doors, be invisible on CCTV. And now you tell us Owl’s M.O. was arson! I’ll bet it’s his ghost that haunts the old asylum. It all fits, doesn’t it?’
‘All except for the bit about the spooks being real,’ said Abe. ‘That one’s pretty hard to swallow.’
‘Yesterday we – Nedly and I – did a bit of poking around on our own. One of the orphans, Clark ‘Babyface’ Kennedy confessed that the night Nedly disappeared he was heading for the old asylum at Rorschach too. That’s the best clue we’ve had so far. So even if you don’t believe my theory about Owl you have to go there and follow up the lead on Ned Stubbs, don’t you?’
‘I think I’ll sit this one out.’
Lil’s eyes glistened fiercely. ‘Fine. I can go by myself. I’ve got along perfectly well without you until now.’ She gritted her teeth. ‘But a boy died in this crummy town and people seem to think that doesn’t matter. I thought we were about finding out who was responsible, and justice and all that stuff – and, if nothing else, someone actually paid you to find out, so shame on you if you don’t see it through. At least you owe it to him to try. You owe it to me!’
Abe pursed his lips like he was about to play the trombone and his face took on a purplish tint in the blue-green light.
Lil persevered. ‘Well, don’t you?’
‘Have you finished?’ he growled.
Lil fixed him with a glare and folded her arms. ‘You tell me.’
‘OK,’ he sighed. ‘We’ll go.’ Lil grabbed her mac and headed for the door. Abe watched her in disbelief. ‘Now?’
She shrugged in a way that meant, obviously, why not?
He gave her a bewildered look. ‘Because it’s getting dark … and they say the old asylum is haunted.’
‘Right now the Ocean View Room is haunted, and anyway –’ she raised one eyebrow at him – ‘you don’t believe in ghosts. Come on, we’ll take a torch.’
Lil and Nedly waited near the basement steps while Abe went round to get the Zodiac. Nedly was going through the motions of scuffing his trainers against the kerb with a gloomy look on his face.
‘Don’t sweat it, Nedly,’ Lil said. ‘He’ll come round.’
A cleaning firm was clearing up all the burnt rubbish from Abe’s old rooms. A scaffolding platform stacked with charred furniture and boxes was being lowered from the seventh floor.
‘It’s not that,’ Nedly replied distractedly, watching the wisps of black paper floating down through the rain like birds, disintegrating into powder before they hit the ground. ‘It just doesn’t make sense. I’ve seen Owl before, I know I have, but when I saw him, I’m sure that he was alive.’
‘But that doesn’t make sense – you would only have been a baby when he died.’
‘I told you it doesn’t make sense.’
He kicked pointlessly at a piece of paper that had fallen into the gutter, barely rippling the water that swam over it. It was a photograph with curled and blackened edges. Ramon LeTeef’s face was all but burnt away, only his small weak eyes and the mouth crammed full of sharp teeth remained.
At the newsstand on the corner was the latest edition of the Herald. The front cover showed a picture of Mayor Dean in a new, unsinged sheepskin coat, shaking the hands of a shady-looking business man as a new casino opened its doors to the public. There was no mention on the front cover about the arson spree or the Firebug Killer – as far as the Herald was concerned, he didn’t exist at all.