Pretty Little Dead Things Read online

  I stepped back into my own dark doorway, wary that she might see me. I'd been following her for a couple of days, ever since her father agreed to my slightly inflated fee proposal.

  Baz Singh was a well-known Bradford businessman. He owned three curry restaurants, an off licence, and a small strip club in the centre of Bradford which – if the rumours were true – also doubled-up as a brothel. The girl was his daughter, Kareena, and in my considered opinion she was certainly worth watching.

  Let me get something straight right from the start. I am not a private eye or some glorified down-at-heel shamus; I do not have an official licence to run around investigating things the police are paid good tax money to look into. My days are not dedicated to Chandleresque sleuthing and I certainly don't spout sudden bursts of clipped dialogue while I hunt down Maltese Falcons or tarnished McGuffins. No, I just try to help people out, people who ask and who are willing to pay me for my trouble. Sometimes this works, other times it doesn't. Often it all goes horribly wrong. But it's a damn sight better – and safer – than what I used to do for a living: better by far than mingling with the dead.

  My name is Thomas Usher and I am – well – that's part of the problem. I don't really know who or what I am, not any more. Not since I began to feel the maggot of self-doubt gnawing away at my guts, not since the potentially true nature of my peculiar abilities were revealed to me in a glimpse too brief even to be considered fleeting. Since then I have tried to stick to the right path and avoid all things… unearthly, for want of a better word. These days I was more likely to be looking for someone's missing teenage daughter or absent spouse than gazing into the heart of the abyss.

  But it wasn't always that way.

  I used to be gifted but now I feel cursed. At one time I thought my purpose in life was to help the dead find their way through the dark, but these days it seems that I might have been mistaken.

  These days I can't even help the living.

  Kareena Singh stubbed out her cigarette against the wall and pushed away towards the middle of the footpath, like someone kicking off from the side of a swimming pool. A small burst of sparks remained in her wake, held in the air for a moment like a tiny swarm of fireflies before being washed away by the rain. The intensity of the rainfall had diminished, leaving behind that fine, wispy rain that seems to get you even wetter than its heavier counterpart. My scalp was soaking and my coat was stuck to my back.

  "Come on, Byron." Her voice was pure Bradford: dull, dour, an ugly sound from a pretty mouth.

  "Yeah, yeah." The large shaven-headed Caucasian man she was shouting at shook the hand of the even larger bouncer he'd been locked in conversation with and approached Kareena as she opened her arms to take him in a loose embrace. He ignored the gesture and grabbed her slim forearm, guiding her instead out into the centre of the road, where he stood trying to flag down a passing taxi. His hands, as he waved them in front of his face, looked as big as shovels, and just as lethal.

  I watched the couple without leaving my hiding place, studying the way they moved, the subtleties of their body language. One of the downsides of my particular type of insight is that I am often unable to read people. The dead are easy to understand if you know the rules – they follow straight lines of logic – but the living rarely think or act in a linear manner, and I am sometimes left feeling confused. I manage to fumble through, but whatever insights I have come from darker regions than those inhabited by the sunlit folk I meet on a daily basis.

  The truth is, only death could help me read the living.

  The muscle-man's name was Byron Spinks. I'd gathered enough information on him to know that he was a low-level criminal involved in everything from house burglary through car crime to prostitution. Kareena was seeing him simply because her father disapproved – that fact was obvious to anyone who took the time to look, even to me. Baz Singh had already arranged his daughter's marriage to a wealthy Indian business partner, but Kareena wasn't playing ball. She liked the freedom Western culture offered her, the right to make her own decisions and see any man she liked. The right to try before you buy.

  And this was where I came in.

  Baz Singh had retained my services and asked me to watch his daughter and report on her movements. He was terrified that she was planning to run away with this yobbo Spinks, and that any business capital to be gained from the proposed arranged marriage would go down the drain like so much discarded confetti during a storm.

  The couple crouched and climbed into a taxi, so I ran for my car, which was parked at the kerb a few yards away in a No Parking zone where I knew I'd get away with it. I dodged a group of weaving late night revellers and climbed inside, following the taxi as it passed through a series of amber lights and headed out of the city towards the inner ring road. I'd seen enough cop shows on television to know that I should keep at least one vehicle between myself and the car I was trailing, but I was also worried that my lack of real experience in covert pursuit would ensure that I lost them in the heavy night time traffic. The fact that I hated cars and driving was yet another obstacle to overcome.

  I didn't like this kind of work. It wasn't what I was made for. Then again, I wasn't really made for anything – that was the other part of the problem.

  During my years as what can only be described as a psychic sleuth I'd honed and utilised many specialised methods. Seeing the dead, being called upon by spirits to help guide them to the next level, is a very esoteric field – I had no business rivals and I paid no income tax on my earnings. It was hard work, thankless for the most part. But after the death of my wife and daughter it was the only thing in my life that meant anything. My talent – my ability to see ghosts – was like an anchor, ironically tethering me to the physical world. Without it, I would've taken a hot bath with a cold razor, or dived off the nearest bridge with rocks in my pockets.

  But that's another story.

  After a few miles the taxi left the ring road at an exit marked for Bestwick, and I cringed at the thought of pursuing these people into what I knew was a rough area. But the taxi continued, passing through the outskirts of the mean-looking estate, and carrying on towards a disused industrial complex called Clara Heights. The place consisted of a wide concrete access road leading to several warehouse units, most of which had been gutted in a serious fire a couple of years ago, and some vacant office space which had miraculously survived the blaze. Prefab huts and squat redbrick buildings were scattered among the blackened shells of the warehouses. I knew the place was dangerous. If red-top news reports were to be believed, the area was used regularly by junkies and sex pests.

  "Welcome to the Terror Dome," I muttered, reciting the line from a film, or a book or a song – I'm still not sure which.

  The taxi stopped at the kerb and the couple climbed out. By this point Kareena looked slightly worse for the evening's drugs-and-alcohol intake: she was stumbling and her clothes were dishevelled. It looked to me as if she and Spinks had been getting more than cosy on the back seat.

  Kareena's black stockings were rolled down to her knees.

  According to Singh, his daughter had been seeing Spinks for six weeks – long enough for her to trust him but not long enough to really know him. I had the suspicion that the promise of danger associated with this thug was half the attraction, and that Kareena knew exactly what she was doing and why she was doing it. Pure bloody-mindedness and the desire to hurt her father were the motivating factors in this particular soap opera.

  My heart sank. Over the years, I'd seen the bloodied remains of too many women who'd made similar mistakes, the sorry victims of abuse and murder and sexual mutilation, the torn, shredded bodies of those whose only crime had been to make a bad choice on a lonely night. I'd watched them, these murdered women, as they tried and failed to speak to me from somewhere else. They often wept as they failed to communicate the depth of their pain through the barrier of death.

  I closed my eyes and held my breath, summoning the courage to go
on, to follow these two people towards the edge of their personal darkness. I think even then I knew what was coming, but I kept on going anyway, stupidly hoping that this would not turn into exactly the kind of situation I'd been running from.

  When I opened my eyes the taxi had already pulled away; I could see the twin sparks of its taillights as they diminished to tiny pinpricks in the dark.

  I glanced over to where the two passengers were now stumbling over a stretch of rough ground towards the shabby heart of the small industrial estate, holding on tightly to each other in case they fell. Hesitating for only a moment, I left the car and followed them over the rubble-strewn ground. I trod softly, as if I were engaged in some kind of guerrilla warfare. I had no idea who else was around, or who they might be meeting here, and the last thing I wanted was to draw attention to my presence on the scene.

  I recalled Baz Singh's words to me earlier that day: "Just follow her, and if she gets into trouble, intervene as best you can. If she gets hurt, it's her own decision, but I don't want her dead." The man was as heartless as one of the many stone statues that littered his home – artful representations of the Hindu gods he no longer believed in yet paid lip service to in the name of commerce. It seemed to me that he probably wanted his daughter to be hurt so that she might be punished for her transgressions, but even he drew the line at allowing her to come to serious harm. My role here was as a glorified babysitter, but the money was good so it was a situation worth sticking with.

  Or so I hoped.

  Not for the first time, I questioned my own involvement in such matters, and with such unappealing people. In the past I'd always sought out the good, or at least the semi good. Now I worked for anyone who would pay me. Not for the first time, I wished that things could be different. That I hadn't once felt the pull of something dark and hungry and powerful as it moved towards me through the spaces between stars.

  I regretted the people who had died over the years because I might have unknowingly drawn dark forces towards me. And when I saw their faces in my mind, screaming silent accusations at me, demanding their right to speak, I felt utterly lost.

  The truth was I no longer felt able to connect with the departed. Their demands were too intense, and so much more than I was currently willing to handle. I was stuck in some weird middle ground, hating the living and tired of the dead.

  Spinks allowed Kareena to go first and followed her towards the blackened entrance of one of the burned-out warehouses. The timber boards barring the entrance had at some point been stripped away from the door, and the door itself had been kicked in. Darkness swallowed Kareena's small, agile figure. Glancing once over his shoulder, his large pale face leering like a clown's mask in the gloom, Spinks entered the building behind her.

  That should have been the moment that I walked away. Should have been. But wasn't.

  I paused at the doorway when I reached it, sensing something stirring lazily within. Not the couple I'd followed, nor any associate of theirs. No, this presence was something entirely different; it was a thing I'd been fighting not to acknowledge since I'd arrived here at the industrial estate. My failure to see the dead was not an actual breakdown of my ability, it was a deliberate act. For thirteen months now I'd fought against the insight that raged within me, blocking them out, ignoring their voiceless pleas, pretending that they did not still come to me in droves, seeking my aid.

  But the dead were never restful. They were always there, peering over my shoulder, stepping into my path, and it was difficult to ignore them for long.

  The struggle was taking its toll on my physical appearance – I looked thin and haggard and older than my years – and my head hurt constantly. I devoured painkillers by the packet, their effect diminishing with each passing day. A doctor friend who knew almost everything about me, and had done for many years, often suggested I take harder drugs – morphine, even heroin – but that was a route I didn't want to take, despite his promises to carefully administer just enough to fight my demons. No, I had to do this alone – until I was ready to once again allow the dead access to my battered psyche.

  I took a breath and ducked into the warehouse. Every inch of skin on my body was cold, as if I'd sunk suddenly into icy waters.

  I could hear footsteps up ahead. Kareena giggled and whispered something I couldn't quite make out. Her voice sounded slurred, unsteady, and I began to fear for her. I never carried a weapon when I was working, but right then I wished that I had a gun. Baz Singh had shown me a small pistol that he'd acquired for my use, but I'd told him to lock it back inside his desk drawer and hide the key. The taking of a human life was an alien concept to me. I had communed with the dead for so long and so often that I had no desire to add to their numbers.

  The darkness pulsed around me like a sea of organic black matter, clinging to my clothes, entwining with my hair, sticking to my skin. I kept raising a hand to push it away or wipe it off, but could feel nothing of any substance beneath my fingers. It was an illusion, like so many others I'd encountered over the years. The dark was not alive, nor was it sentient – but there was no doubt in my mind that it did contain something which thought and probed and hungered. It was looking for the gaps in my armour, the chinks and damaged areas caused by fear.

  Fear was something I could ill afford to show, so I kept it down, kept it at bay.

  The sound of a woman giggling came to me again, this time from farther away. Its source could've been miles ahead of me, but that would have been impossible because the industrial building I was moving around inside took up not more than a few hundred square yards. I lost all sense of walls and floor and ceiling. The air opened up, as if sucking me into a vast and airless space. It was a struggle to hang on to my sense of reality; things wanted to move and shift, and transform into other less solid objects.

  It was a sensation I was more than familiar with.

  Footsteps echoed on the concrete floor and I concentrated on their hollow music, focusing on the sound as if it were a lifeline to what I knew to be real and solid and earthly. Phantoms swam in and out of vision, reaching out to me, clutching at the tattered remnants of my resolve, picking away the stitches of my refusal to accept them.

  "Leave me. Let me be." But they wouldn't listen. Instead, they intensified their attempts to snag me in the dark, groping for my weak points.

  "This way," said a man's voice – one which I assumed must belong to Spinks. Kareena laughed again, and then fell abruptly silent. I stood there for what seemed like hours, trying to navigate the at once familiar country I found myself in. The landscape was soft, blurred at the edges, but the topography was similar to those places I'd traversed before, many times. This was the realm of the dead, a land where the common laws of physics did not hold sway. What disturbed me more than the ease with which I'd crossed over was the fact that I'd accepted such an extreme transition so readily. Fear gnawed at my insides, a rat in a soft cage, and again I tried to block it out, ignore it, and carry on into the dark.

  After thirteen months of denial, I had finally found my way back home – as good a home as any, the only one I really knew.

  It was as if a map appeared before me in the darkness, with a route etched in threads and filaments of light. I knew exactly where to go, and accepted that I was being led – by my weird instincts, and by the dead who walked before me, clearing a path like native guides on an expedition deep into their homeland. I can't be sure how long I was in there, delving into a night like no other, but it felt like ages had passed, the world withering outside, people dying and being born. All clocks had stopped; time meant nothing to me.

  I followed a narrow passage and stood at the top of a flight of concrete stairs. Each of the steps was blackened by an old fire, their edges chipped and cracked. The banister had fallen away at some point, so I clutched the bare wall as I descended, unsure of what I would find at their base.

  The cramped space at the bottom of the stairs was flooded. My feet rested in several inches of standing
water. The darkness receded, and then rushed back in increments, but this time it was a normal darkness. My guides had abandoned me, deciding that from here on in I would either know the way or could find it without their help. Water sloshed loudly in the hollow chamber. I reached out in front of me to find some kind of purchase. When my fingers fell upon a ragged door handle, I slowly turned it and pushed. The door opened awkwardly, held back by the standing water, but I leaned my weight against it and stepped into the cold room beyond…

  At first I was unable to see anything beyond the rubble and the dark reflections in the restless puddles, but gradually my eyesight grew accustomed to the poor conditions. I'd come at them from behind, somehow managing to take a route that would allow me to remain unseen. There were two of them inside the damp chamber, yet I had the sense that someone else had recently departed the scene. Ghost footsteps rippled the surface of the shallow pools of water nearby, and the tableaux on the raised concrete platform up ahead seemed incomplete, unfinished, as if a vital element was missing from the whole.