9

Miller drove Harry Henry to the film set. He got out of the car and blinked through his thick lenses as he took in the building.

“This place is haunted,” he said. “There’s all sorts of stories.”

“Not you as well,” said Miller. “Bunny says - oh never mind, what Bunny says. And remind me to give her a call later to see how she is.”

Harry said he would.

They flashed their i.d. to get past the security staff at the gate.

“Hoi, Mel,” the man called after them, “How’s Bunny today?”

Miller waved back but kept walking. She was grinning from ear to ear. If felt good to be associated with someone so famous.

“Who’s Bunny?” said Harry Henry. Miller checked to see if he was joking. He wasn’t.

“Oh, Harry!” she despaired. “Now, a bit of shush, in case they’m filming.”

She guided Harry through the gift shop set. She pointed out Oscar Buzz and Delia Cartwright but Harry was unimpressed. She might as well have just said there’s a man and there’s a woman, never mind their status as two of the most attractive people ever produced by millions of years of evolution.

They waited patiently until someone said Cut, then they approached Jessica Bean who baulked to see their i.d.

“Is there anyone on this lot who isn’t a copper?” she tried to laugh.

“The missing and the dead,” said Miller tersely. “Where’s Julian Farrow?”

“Beats me,” said Jessica Bean.

“Does he?” said Harry Henry. Miller nudged him and told him not to write that down.

“You’re welcome to look for him,” Jessica turned on a smile. “We’re trying to keep busy here. To help us get through this difficult time.”

“His office?” said Miller.

“Through there,” Jessica waved vaguely.

“Thank you!” beamed Harry Henry. Miller pulled him away.

“I’ve never liked her,” Miller confided. “Didn’t she seem a little off to you? A little nervous?”

Harry Henry pulled a face. “Nervous business, film-making. I expect.”

They had come to a corridor that used to house administration rooms when the hospital was functional. The rooms had been commandeered as offices for the crew. The producers had the largest and the director the next. Both rooms were empty.

They looked around at the paperwork left behind by Dabney Dorridge and now by Julian Farrow. Miller jumped when the fax machine beeped and grunted. Printed pages spooled out and fell to the floor.

“From L.A.” Harry Henry twisted his neck to read the papers at his feet. Miller pushed him aside and picked up the pages.

“From someone called Monty,” she read. She flicked through the scripted scene. “Bloody hell. There’s aliens.”

“Where?”

“In the film. There’s going to be aliens showing up and Doctor Kilmore will save the planet by introducing them to penicillin.”

“Sounds unlikely,” said Harry. “Was the programme so outlandish?”

“No,” said Miller. “The programme was all doctors and nurses, falling in love and out again. There was none of this bollocks.”

“I don’t understand... ”

“It’s the Americans,” said Miller. “They’re into all this kind of thing. CGI. Here, there’s an ambulance that turns itself into a giant robot.”

“I don’t think I’ll be queuing for a ticket,” said Henry, losing interest in the faxes. “Have you seen this, Mel?”

He pulled out a map of the hospital from under other papers on the desk. Areas were marked off with the scenes that would be filmed there. “Look,” he tapped one corner, “That’s where they’re doing that shop scene we walked through.”

Miller peered over his shoulder. “That’s right. And there’s the main ward... I was in that bed there and Oscar Buzz walked right by me.”

“I wonder where the aliens will land... ” Harry perused the map.

“Never mind that. What about these areas here?” She tapped her finger on unlabelled rectangles in one wing of the main building.

Harry stuck out his lower lip and shook his head.

Miller looked closer. There was tiny print, faded with age. “... Treatment quarters... ” she read. She shuddered. “This place used to be a wossname, a loony bin, you know.”

Harry was shocked. “You can’t call it that, Mel. It’s not nice.”

“It wasn’t nice. What they used to do to those poor buggers back then. That’s where the ghosts come from, you know. Supposed to be the restless souls of the tortured.”

“Ugh,” said Harry with a shiver. “Ghosts is one thing. But loony ghosts is another.”

A breeze riffled the papers on the desk. The detectives froze.

“There’s a draught,” said Miller. “Old place like this; bound to be.”

Harry Henry was unconvinced.

“Come on,” Miller tugged his sleeve. “Let’s go and have a look. Don’t worry; I won’t let the loony ghosts get you.”

Harry Henry whimpered. But he followed Miller along the corridor and deeper into the building.

***

“We can’t go in there,” Pattimore said to Stevens. He pointed at the chain strung across the corridor. A sign hung off it. “It says it’s condemned.”

“I’m not into politics,” said Stevens obliquely. He hitched his long leg over the chain.

“Are you sure?” said Pattimore. “It’s dark down there.”

Stevens looked at the younger detective. He knew what Pattimore was referring to. Their last case had been particularly unpleasant, involving an extended period in a dank and dismal cellar. It had been a horrific business all round.

“I’m fine, Jason,” Stevens said. “Done my time with the shrinks. Got all that out of my system. Now, are you going to plant your arse there or are you coming with?”

Admiring Stevens’s resilience, Pattimore followed. There’s something to be said for being a thick-skinned boorish wally after all, he reflected. Pattimore’s own experience with counselling had not been such plain sailing. He still attended on a fortnightly basis to discuss issues arising from that last case and others - oh, if Davey knew how dedicated I am to sorting my head out! It pained him to think that Brough wasn’t around to see how virtuous he was being.

Stevens jumped out at him from the shadows.

“Wanker,” said Pattimore. “Stop fucking about; we’ve got work to do.”

***

Robert Bean breathed out. He dared not inhale while visiting the men. They were beginning to stink to high heaven by this point. He took them food and water twice a day and would have to do something about providing buckets but he’d be buggered if he was going to empty them. And Jessica wouldn’t do it. She’d scream the place down.

He checked the doors were locked. They were good, sturdy doors. Fine examples of Victorian workmanship. Several inches thick and fashioned from iron, the doors ensured the cells behind them were soundproof - no one wanted to hear the screams of those old loonies as they were subjected to whatever the ‘treatment’ in ‘treatment rooms’ referred to. Water, he imagined, and rubber tubing. And later, electricity. It was supposedly a step up from the old medieval idea of demonic possession and exorcisms, but it was all potato-potahto in his view.

Distracted by these musings, he did not hear their approach. He winced, flinching from the harsh light they shone in his face.

“Hello,” said Detective Sergeant Miller. “What are you doing down here?”

Rob pulled his hoodie over his head and barged past the woman and the black man, winding the latter in the process. The detectives gave chase, calling Stop, Police! But that only served to make the fugitive flee faster.

Miller and Henry gave chase. The corridors were a warren of twists and turns. Within seconds, they lost sight of their quarry. They stopped. Harry Henry’s panting reverberated off the walls.

Rob kept running. He glanced over his shoulder and laughed. He had lost the cops almost as quickly as they had found him. He slowed a little, thinking fast. They knew nothing - and as long as he had the keys, they would find nothing. If they catch me, he decided, I’ll tell them I got lost. I’ll say I’m an extra. Sis will back me up.

He laughed. He was far too clever for any copper.

He turned a corner and collided with a tall man with a porn star moustache.

“Watch where you’m fucking going,” said Stevens, seizing him by the front of his hoody.

“Soz,” muttered Rob, not looking up, “Got lost looking for the bog.”

“Oh, well, it’s through there and... ”

“Ben!” Pattimore interrupted. He had his phone to his ear. “It’s Miller. Be on the lookout for a bloke in a hoody.”

“Uh?” said Stevens. Then he swore as the bloke in a hoody stamped on his foot and pushed him against the wall.

Rob tore along the passage. Pattimore gave chase with Stevens limping along behind.

Around a corner came Harry Henry and Miller. Rob ducked away and took another turn. He burst into the gift shop set, colliding with display units of Get Well cards. Scrambling to his feet, he ran into the magazine stand as four detectives appeared on the scene, shouting and swearing.

“There’s the bastard!” cried Stevens, throwing himself at the fleeing figure and tackling him to the floor. Rob wriggled, kicking at Stevens’s underbelly. He got free and tore around the set. He dodged Pattimore and Harry Henry before plunging into the stupefied onlookers, shoving them out of the way in his desperation to escape.

Stevens grabbed a large tin of toffees from a shelf and hurled it at the fugitive’s head. It felled him at once. Everyone gathered around until the detectives made them stand aside, warding them off with their i.d. cards.

“What the fuck is going on?” roared one of the producers.

“That ain’t in the script!” complained the other.

They glanced at each other. “But it could be... ” they said at once. One resolved to call Monty right away and fuck the time difference. The other approached Stevens and asked if he’d ever considered a career in the movies.

Miller stepped between them before Stevens could respond.

“Gentlemen, we have a suspect to question,” she said. “Meanwhile, I suggest you halt production until we get to the bottom of this.”

“Here,” said Pattimore. He’d rifled the unconscious man’s pockets and found a bunch of large and old-looking keys.

“I don’t get it,” said the first producer.

“Me either,” said the other.

“Gentlemen,” said Miller, “I have an inkling we’re about to find out what happened to Bernard Brody and Dabney Dorridge.”

“And Julian Farrow,” added Harry Henry.

“Yes; thank you, Harry.”