The Secrets of Ghosts (18 page)

‘That ugly thing? Pass on my condolences to your friend.’

‘So, you did see a watch?’

‘It was in his wash bag. In a gift box all ready to give to one of his whores.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘You think I didn’t know?’ Mrs Cole said. ‘I knew. I knew all about his extra-curricular activities.’

‘The thing is, the watch belongs to my friend.’ Katie didn’t think gambling would seem worse than infidelity, but it still didn’t feel right to out Mr Cole. ‘I don’t want to speak ill of the dead—’

‘Oh, go ahead. It’s what the bastard deserves.’

‘Right. Well. He was supposed to give the watch to my friend and he didn’t. I’m sure he was going to, but, well—’

‘He popped his clogs.’ Mrs Cole was looking at Katie in an appraising way. ‘You’re not one of his girls, are you? You don’t seem the type.’

‘No,’ Katie said. ‘I swear.’

‘Then I’m sorry. I gave your friend’s watch to the Red Cross shop, along with all his clothes and CDs and the fucking ugly coffee table he made me live with for the past ten years.’

‘Oh,’ Katie said, taking a step back. Mrs Cole took advantage of the moment and swung the door closed.

‘Which Red Cross shop?’ Katie said, but the door banged shut.
Fabulous
. Katie looked at the door for a few moments before returning to her car. On one hand it was good that Mrs Cole wasn’t sentimentally attached to the watch, but Katie was still none the wiser as to what Mr Cole wanted her to do about it. And the more Katie found out about Mr Cole, the less inclined she was to help him. When she’d thought about helping others, she’d always pictured nice people like Fred Byres. She hadn’t planned on being an errand girl for a lying, cheating scumbag like Oliver Cole.

Chapter 10

The hotel car park was full long before Barton’s show was due to start. There were vehicles parked along the driveway and in front of the main house. Patrick watched the audience enjoying pre-show drinks in the bar with evident delight. Katie was surprised he wasn’t actually rubbing his hands together. ‘Have you seen this crowd?’ he said to Katie. ‘Unbelievable. I had no idea the show would be this popular.’

‘There’s no accounting for taste,’ Katie said.

‘Are you working?’ Patrick said, his eyes still on the crowd.

‘Excuse me.’ One of the temp staff appeared. ‘Mr Allen? There’s a couple here who want to sleep in the haunted room. I wasn’t sure—’

‘What?’ Katie whipped around, but Patrick was already hurrying towards Reception. Then she got distracted by the sight of Max walking in through the French doors, which were open to the terrace.

‘Hey, Nancy Drew,’ he said, kissing her on the cheek. ‘Ready for our hot date?’

‘We’re going to watch a man we both abhor. Really sexy.’

‘And you dressed for the occasion.’ He looked at her work uniform.

‘I’ve just finished my shift.’

‘I love a woman in uniform.’ Max gave her an appreciative look that she felt down to the tips of her toes.

‘Bloody hell, does this approach actually work for you?’

‘Usually,’ Max said. He offered her his arm. ‘M’lady.’

‘Idiot,’ Katie said, but she reached out anyway and let him tuck her hand around his upper arm.

The tables in the function room had been stacked in the breakfast room, and every available chair in the building pressed into service. The rows of seats faced a makeshift stage at the front of the room with a spotlight trained onto two modern armchairs with a low table between them. It looked like the set for a business seminar. A young woman dressed in black trousers and T-shirt placed a bottle of mineral water and a glass onto the table and then fiddled with a microphone stand, angling it towards one of the chairs.

The people filling the room were chatting quietly and there was an air of intense anticipation. ‘We should’ve got here earlier,’ Max said, suddenly sounding tense. ‘We’re too far back.’

Katie looked around at the crowded space. She knew that Gwen had a steady stream of people coming to the back door at End House, asking for remedies and advice, but that was different. That actually helped. She shook her head. ‘There must be a hundred MOPs in here. Patrick will be delighted.’

Max didn’t reply. He was leaning forward, his hands gripping his knees in claws.

‘Are you okay?’

Max shrugged quickly. ‘Not exactly. I really don’t like this man.’

‘You mentioned that once or twice.’ Katie nudged him, trying to lighten the mood.

‘But I kind of want him to be the real thing, too. I want him to, I don’t know, give me a message—’

‘I’m sorry,’ Katie said, hit by his sudden vulnerability, the spark of hope in his voice. ‘I don’t think that’s likely.’

Katie took his hand and squeezed it. The final stragglers were coming into the room; some had bottles of water and some were clutching personal items like talismans. One man had a gold carriage clock. He hesitated, scanning the rows for a spare seat and then took the final one. Katie tried not to think about all the sad, grieving, frightened people, in the room. It was too awful.

Someone put the lights off in the room and the chatter stopped almost instantly. The spotlit chairs seemed to grow in size with the weight of expectation in the room. A door opened and the female assistant appeared. She was carrying a couple of wireless microphones and she passed one to a Grange staff member and they crossed to the other side of the room, waiting. Then, a short man in a sharp suit came through the open doorway and stepped quickly up onto the stage. Greg Barton smiled with dazzling teeth and welcomed them all to his ‘house of spirits’. He had odd, puffy hair that rose in a stiff bouffant above his rather jowly face. His skin had an unreal orange tinge and Katie wondered whether he was addicted to sun beds or had overdone the stage make-up.

‘Thank y’all for inviting me here,’ he said in a strange transatlantic accent that seemed to span Yorkshire and America by way of the deep south. ‘Before we begin, I need you to switch off mobile phones and to remind you that strictly no filming or recording of this event is allowed. It annoys the spirits.’ He smiled, cocking an eyebrow at someone in the front row.

‘So that no one plays it back and realises he was cold reading the whole time,’ Max said quietly.

‘Can I please ask for silence while I summon my spirit guide?’ Barton pressed his hands together and closed his eyes. Max rolled his at Katie, but he still looked oddly tense.

Part of Barton’s skit was that he was in touch with a spirit called Magda. She was apparently the ghost of an American heiress and she helped Barton connect with the other side. Out of the goodness of her dead heart, apparently.

Barton opened his eyes. ‘Magda says there is somebody with her now. A man. Does the name John mean anything to anyone here?’

‘John is only one of the most common male names in the Western hemisphere,’ Katie leaned in close to whisper into Max’s ear and she caught the scent of his skin. She leaned away again quickly.

A woman in the third row had her hand up. ‘My husband was Jonathan.’

Barton walked to the edge of the stage. The runner had already passed along a hand-held microphone to the woman and she spoke into it. ‘My husband—’ she began.

He held up a hand, silencing her. ‘Magda says this man is very sad. I’m getting the letter “P” — does that mean anything to you? And the letter “S”.’

The woman gasped.

‘The letter “S” is very strong. I’m sensing that’s important.’

Nice fishing
. Katie wondered how many letters Barton usually had to throw out before he got a hit. Two? Three? In a crowd this size, he could always switch to someone else, claim the spirits were talking to them now. It made her sick. All of these poor people, looking for answers. They wanted the comfort that knowledge could bring and Barton was feeding off them.

‘Our son is Simon.’

‘He says he doesn’t like to see you upset. Does that sound like him?’

Yeah, that sounded like everybody, ever
.

The woman had a tissue pressed up against her face. She nodded mutely.

Katie shifted in her chair. It was painful to watch the act, when she knew that the man was alone up there. No spooks. Or ghosties or ghouls.

She turned to Max and found him sitting forward, looking as if he wanted to hit something. She didn’t blame him.

A young woman in the front row burst into tears and Barton looked down at her, his face a picture of sympathetic benevolence. ‘Your granddad says “hi”.’

‘No, he doesn’t.’ Violet’s unmistakable cut-glass tones sounded in Katie’s right ear. Katie whipped around but she couldn’t see her. The large man sitting next to Katie gave her a funny look, though.

‘Where are you?’ she said, very quietly. Almost under her breath. The man next to her glanced anyway, then looked away very quickly.
He thinks I’m mad
. She resisted the urge to say, ‘You’re the one paying to watch a man pretend to be psychic.’

Barton threw his head back and the audience gasped. His eyes rolled back in his head. Katie had read up on him and apparently he was famous for being ‘taken over’ by a spirit. He spoke as them, in a strange high voice and it was, according to
The Birmingham Gazette
, ‘not to be missed’.

‘Mummy?’ Barton spoke in a high squeaky voice and Katie had to stuff her hand into her mouth to stop herself from laughing out loud. She didn’t dare look at Max’s face or she knew she wouldn’t be able to keep quiet.

‘It’s dark,’ Barton squeaked. ‘I want my mummy.’ He dropped his head, his arms going limp and then, after a few seconds of stillness, he raised his head and stared, seemingly sightlessly, out across the assembled people.

‘Peek a boo.’ He wasn’t doing the squeaky voice any more but something in his tone made all the hairs stand up on the back of Katie’s neck.

‘What a funny fat man. Shall I make him dance?’

Barton’s eyes were wide, now. Terrified.

‘Stop it,’ Katie said, standing up. ‘Violet. Just stop.’

‘You’re no fun.’ Barton’s lips were moving and it was his vocal cords that were making the sounds, but the inflection and accent was pure Violet. It was her, speaking through Barton as if he were a puppet.

Katie watched in horror as Violet detached herself from Barton. It was hard to focus on, gave Katie a headache to try, but she saw Violet appear from within Barton. As soon as she was separate, he sagged forwards and one of the assistants ran up on stage to catch him before he hit the floor. Violet, meanwhile, was sort of filling up again, becoming more solid as Katie watched. Once she was corporeal-looking again, she gave Katie a beatific smile and sauntered off stage left.

‘Ladies and gentlemen.’ Barton had almost straightened up. Katie had to hand it to the man: he was a trooper. ‘What you just witnessed was interference from an evil spirit.’ He held up his hands. ‘Don’t be alarmed. Magda has seen off the evil but I must remind you all that this is why you must only ever attempt to communicate with the dead through an experienced professional such as myself.’

Violet had disappeared. Katie scanned the room, looking for her, her mind racing. Violet could step inside a human being and make them move. It was kind of horrible. The audience was still fussing, but Greg Barton was getting them back. His voice carried through the room, blanketing with phrases like ‘part of the process’ and ‘it’s okay to feel emotions’ and ‘intense spiritual experience’.

*

Max was distracted after Barton’s show. He kissed Katie on the cheek and thanked her for accompanying him. She’d expected him to make some kind of move, and was almost disappointed when he didn’t. Maybe he’d decided that he didn’t fancy her after all. Or that she was too uptight to be worth bothering with. That wasn’t unlikely.

‘I’m just…’ Max trailed off. He was looking into the middle distance, his eyes unfocused.

‘Are you okay?’ Katie wanted to talk about the show. She found she even wanted to tell Max about what Violet had done. He wouldn’t believe her, of course, but the urge was there. Which was a bit weird.

‘Yeah. Just tired.’ He didn’t meet her eye. ‘I’m going out for some fresh air.’

Katie watched as Max walked away from her and tried not to feel hurt that he hadn’t wanted her company. A walk outside sounded nice. Instead, she headed upstairs to talk to either Barton or Violet. Whichever one she found first. She knocked on the door to Barton’s suite and pushed it open. He was sitting on the burgundy sofa, a tumbler of amber liquid in one hand and a newspaper open on his lap.

‘I’m sorry to bother you, Mr Barton—’

He didn’t look up. ‘Just put it on the table.’

‘Um... I’m not—’

He glanced up then, with an expression that probably would’ve been a frown on a more mobile face. His eyebrows raised ever so slightly.

‘I just wanted to speak to you for a moment, if that’s okay.’

‘Signed photos are in the case. Help yourself.’

‘Thanks,’ Katie said. She walked into the room but left the door wide open. One of the first rules of working in a hotel was never to enter a room with a MOP by yourself and definitely never to close the door. Personal safety 101. ‘But I actually wanted to ask your advice.’

Barton heaved a theatrical sigh and flipped his newspaper shut. He looked at her and then gave her a long look up and down that made Katie’s skin crawl. ‘I knew there’d be a catch.’

‘Sorry?’

‘The free room. I knew there’d be a catch. This is why I usually avoid staying in the venue. Did you see the show, sweetie? Want a private session? You should know that I’m very expensive.’

Katie narrowed her eyes. ‘Fine. I just thought you’d want to know more about what happened to you up there. I thought we could help each other out. Friendly, like.’ She turned to leave. ‘Sorry to have bothered you.’

‘What do you mean?’

Katie turned back. ‘I’m guessing that doesn’t usually happen? Possession?’

‘I’m a direct voice medium — the spirits talk through me all the time. That’s what I do.’ Barton’s tone was pompous but his forehead was beaded with sweat. Off-stage, he didn’t look all that well.

‘Is it usually out of your control like that?’ Katie said.