Gilded Hate Machine

  Gilded Hate Machine

  By Robert Wilde

  The Morthern Detectives Book 2

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  One

  “Well someone’s getting sued.”

  A taxi had just pulled to a halt and the occupants looked out. There were four people in the back of the vehicle, and they were looking at a huge and very well-designed sign which read ‘Dooby Scoo’s Spook House’.

  Rob Lindleman nodded and replied to his superior DI Sharma, “I think they’ve had the legal letter already, when I booked the website had a different branding.”

  “What was the name?” she asked.

  “Morthern Chainsaw Massacre House.”

  “That’s not really an improvement is it,” Sharma said, at which point she realised that as both the highest-ranking officer and oldest member of the group she had to pay the taxi driver. Once the cash was handed over all four got out.

  Rob was grinning widely, Sharma looked sceptical, and Grayling and Maruma stretched after the journey.

  “You do know,” Grayling began, “that when most men offer to take me to a formerly abandoned industrial park and show me a good time, I refuse.”

  “This will definitely put the willies up you,” Rob replied with a wink.

  “There’s a reason that phrase stopped being used,” Grayling sighed.

  “Not in my house.”

  “Shall we go in then?” Sharma asked, although it wasn’t really a question. She started walking to the door; a large gothic structure covered in lights which only just covered up the fact it was fake.

  Lindleman strode to the front, where the two doormen were dressed like zombies. “Hello there, chaps,” tickets were waved, allowing the group to go inside.

  “Okay, regardless of what happens tonight,” Maruma began as he looked at the interior, “they have gone to a lot of effort here.”

  They did genuinely seem to be in the anteroom of a haunted house.

  “Money has been spent,” Grayling agreed.

  “Yes,” Sharma said rolling her eyes, “by us, four times.”

  “Hello children,” cackled an old crone who emerged from behind the check-in counter, “can I see your tickets.”

  “Yeah sure, here we go.”

  “Excellent,” she drew out for effect. “Firstly, I need you to sign these waivers, just in case anything… happens.”

  Four documents were held up, aged to look like parchment.

  Maruma held one up and read it. “I think you’ll find this isn’t legally binding, it’s…what?”

  Rob was smirking at him. “It’s not a real waiver.”

  “It says…”

  “It’s for effect. I signed the actual waiver when I bought the tickets.”

  “That’s no comfort at all,” Grayling informed him.

  “Sign… in blood!” the witch said holding up some red pens.

  “I am so glad I pre-gamed for this,” Sharma said.

  “Games?” Maruma’s ear pricked.

  “Pre-game, the drinks we’ve spent all evening having.”

  “Oh yeah, sorry Inspector.”

  “Inspector?” said a slightly worried witch in a very normal voice.

  Sharma explained. “We’re all members of the Morthern Police Major Crimes Unit, and we’ve all been talked into a Halloween team building exercise by our superior. Which was silly enough, but then we let DC Lindleman choose here.”

  “I am so excited,” he confirmed.

  “Well then go through that door and begin your Spooktacular adventure.”

  “Five minutes for a use of the word Spooktacular,” Maruma began, “you all owe me five quid.”

  A door slid open and the foursome walked into an anteroom the size of a lift. When the door then shut, one opposite opened, and they were able to step into a wide, open room designed to look like a hospital mortuary. A row of lockers had been placed against one wall, trolleys were in rows in the middle, and all but one had sheets over what were meant to be bodies.

  The rogue one had the sheet on the floor; a woman lying there with her stomach torn open, intestines hanging out.

  “In real life that would smell,” Maruma pointed out.

  “What do we think did that then?” Sharma asked. “Not your average knife, we’re looking for something specialist.”

  “This is a scare house,” Rob reminded them, “we are not here to solve a mystery.”

  “Aww,” Maruma replied.

  Behind them, a banging noise started coming from the lockers.

  “Are we meant to open them?” Grayling asked.

  “The rules quite clearly said we aren’t meant to touch,” Rob replied.

  “So, there are rules?”

  “Yes.”

  “Like a game,” Maruma noted.

  “And you haven’t told us these rules?”

  “No Grayling, I haven’t. I thought it would be spookier if we just went in…”

  The disembowelled woman let out a piercing scream and rose up at the waist, reaching a hand, bloody and dripping toward the group who…

  None of the four flinched. None moved a muscle in surprise.

  “Hi,” Sharma said to the body.

  A look of utter confusion passed over the actress, because everyone else she saw at this event ran back into a corner screaming, but with these four unaffected she just lay back down into her corpse position and reset herself for the next group.

  “It is possible I have misjudged how much fun we’ll have in here?” Lindleman wondered aloud.

  “You could definitely build a narrative through one of these and add in puzzles leading to a climactic solution.”

  “Right, two things Maruma,” Lindleman started, “one, the only puzzle in this is how they’re going to try and scare us so chill with the brainpower, in fact don’t work it out just react viscerally, and two, if you do organise that for next year I would totally be an investor cos you’d be awesome at it.”

  “Thanks, I think.”

  “Must be a chainsaw,” Sharma noted, “definitely a chainsaw was meant to have caused that wound; ties in with the second name of the place.”

  “Right, same applies to you Inspector, can we all stop trying to understand the haunted house and just get on enjoying being scared shitless.”

  “Next room then?”

  “Next room.”

  “Bye corpse lady,” Sharma said.

  A confused voice from the corpse replied, “nice to meet you.”

  “But was it a chainsaw?” Sharma checked.

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake.”

  Lucy Rawal had stayed late in school. Not for a detention, that had never happened, but for a group. Her mother had initially objected because it was October in Morthern, and the nights started early; concerned her daughter made it home before darkness. But Lucy had insisted she get a part in the play and go to the rehearsals, so as she tucked her script up and began the walk home, she was buzzing from the experience. If you’d told her last year she’d love Shakespeare she’d have laughed, thinking it was all old words which didn’t make sense. But the beautiful thing about a good teacher was they opened your mind and let the bard do the rest. Her parents had always expected her to go to university one day, but they’d never laid down a rule on what to study. World literature was now on the top of her list. Still a few years to go, of course, but she felt she’d found her true passion and calling.

  She walked down the main road between the school and her estate and noticed a group of lads standing on the corner ahead of her. They’d noticed her too and were looking her up and down, and she wondered if they fancied he
r, if these were the older guys her parents were always trying to warn her about.

  “Where’d you come from?” one asked.

  Lucy looked at the ground and carried on moving.

  “Yeah love, where you from?” said another.

  Lucy opened her mouth to reply, thinking that might be the best thing to do, when one of the men barked at her “cos it ain’t from fucking round here.”

  “Just down the road,” she said, not realising.

  “Nah you’re not, you’re from fucking India or something.”

  Lucy felt a tinge of fear as she realised what was happening, as she realised the group of boys were all white and now coming to crowd round her.

  “Why don’t you fuck off back home,” one said.

  “I’m going home,” she said softly.

  “Not up or down the road or whatever the fuck you said, fuck off back to curry land and leave Morthern to locals.”

  “I was born here!” she shot back, but a youth with close cropped hair stuck his face inches away from Lucy’s and shouted so the spittle from his mouth struck her.

  “Fuck off Paki!”

  “India and Pakistan are diff…” she began, before her fight or flight response kicked in and she turned and ran at full pelt, her rucksack banging into her back. She heard the laughter of the men behind her, and even when she was out of earshot, round a corner, she could still hear their words, see the hate in their faces, and when she felt safe, when the adrenalin dipped, she stopped running and started to cry.

  Susan Edwards was sat in her office. Well, she told people it was her office, because ‘huge open room where I have a tiny area of desk and I have to stop my stationary being nicked by next door’ wasn’t as snappy. Nonetheless, this was her desk, or rather it was her lockable desk drawer, because wherever you put your keys is your home, and she was sat at it tapping away. Life as the court reporter for the Morthern Star was going well, even by her sister’s standards of pessimism, and that wasn’t just her confidence. Everything the paper printed in hard copy was also put online, and her pages were proving very popular which meant advertising money for the editor.

  Speaking of which, he chose that moment to eschew modern communications like send a text or ring the phone; he instead opened the door to his office (which was a genuine room to himself), waddled his fat form out and shouted “Edwards!”

  Duly summoned, Susan leapt up and grabbed a notepad, then went to see what was up.

  “Hello sir” she said as she entered the domain of the monster.

  The Editor, Trevor Stremp, looked her up and down. “You’re being taken off court reporting,” he barked. He barked at everyone, whether things were good or bad, because even when they were good, he wasn’t happy.

  “But sir, people love the writing, my pages are growing by the dozens of percent every week and…”

  “No Edwards, this isn’t a demotion. You’re not court reporting, because I want you dedicated to reporting the election for the Mayor of Morthern town.”

  “The what?”

  “Oh dear, have we been too obsessed with criminals to notice politics?”

  “No, I know there’s a mayor, and there’s an election every so often, what I don’t realise is how this connects to me. Are you implying there’s skulduggery afoot?”

  “I am simply placing one of my best reporters on the subject which is going to dominate the newspaper over the next few weeks.”

  “Right, right, cos normally no one’s interested in it.”

  Stremp smiled. He didn’t usually smile and when he did, he looked like an evil toad. It meant like something was up. “Oh, they’re going to be interested Susan, they are going to be very interested.”

  Susan had worked at the Star long enough to know the editor was up to something. He’d spent weeks trying to sling dirt at Dan Dobbs, the elected and independent Mayor of Morthern, and Susan liked to think he’d moved his ace crime expert over for a reason.

  She shuddered slightly, feeling a little dirty. Stremp’s reasons were usually financial. But still, another chance to impress, something to get her teeth into. If she couldn’t make this election into an exciting story, no one could. She hoped.

  “When do I start?”

  “As soon as you walked in the door. Which means what you were writing is now late. Run along and catch up.”

  Yeah, Stremp was in a good mood.

  John walked down the street. He’d been this way hundreds of times before, once on the way to work in the mornings and once on the way home each day, and he now did it on auto pilot. Obviously you had to pay some attention because the state of the cracked pavement was appalling, where a private company had dug the path up and installed the wires for cable tv then cheaply repaired it, but in general you could just move on and focus on the state of the world. John liked to feel he was in command of things and liked to find a solution to the world’s ills, at least in his own head and for his own peace. As he walked along, he wondered whether there was going to be a mayoral election soon, because he did like to vote. Parliament was a while away and the choosing of the mayor always seemed important. Not that he could tell you what the mayor had done, but hey the buses kept running so…

  The car which hit John was travelling fast, so fast the driver failed to stay on the road and came hammering around a corner, across the path and through John, who was thrown to one side like a child’s doll discarded by a giant. The car braked, skidded to a halt some distance down the road having narrowly missed the walls, and the driver ran back up to where John lay tangled up.

  A few seconds passed, then the driver ran back to the car, started it and sped off.

  John lay on the pavement, his body bent. He wasn’t conscious enough to work out where his phone was, all his mind could do was broil in the agony of his broken frame. Minutes passed as he lay wracked, and the weather turned to rain, making him and the pavement wet.

  When a woman who was walking down the road saw him, it was dangerously late. She ran over, slipping slightly, dropped to one knee to see if he was alive, which he just about was. Her phone was easily accessible, and she called 999, then stayed with John until the ambulance arrived just ten minutes later. She watched as two paramedics in bright green overalls leapt out and examined John, as they pulled out a stretcher and loaded him into their vehicle. She heard them put a call in to get surgery ready for as soon as they arrived, and she readied herself for their departure.

  But they stopped.

  One paramedic stepped off the ambulance and put a hand to their head, and the other pulled a blanket over John and stepped out too.

  “What’s happening?” she asked.

  The paramedics, who she only now saw were a man and woman, looked at her and shook their heads.

  “It was too much. He passed just now. We’ll speak to the police when they get here any minute now.”

  Lucy Rawal felt it was better to have strength in numbers. That was why she was walking in a group of three girls, all from the streets around her, chatting away.

  “Have you done that essay?” one asked.

  “Which one?” Lucy replied. “I’ve had so many essay questions set in the last week I feel like I’m drowning sometimes.”

  “Definitely a hydra,” another added.

  “A what?” the first asked.

  “A creature from ancient myth. You cut off one of its heads and two grow back.”

  “Whose myths?” a girl asked.

  “Greeks, yeah, ancient Greeks.”

  “No wonder they invented the Olympics; lots to run away from,” they all laughed at this piece of deliberate misunderstanding.

  “School is definitely like a hydra at the moment,” Lucy confirmed.

  “At least it’ll get easier once we’ve taken our A-Levels, got a degree and been in work for a few years to establish ourselves; then we can start on the task of buying a house.”

  There was a pause, a shared look of horror, and all began laughing, “oh it doesn
’t sound easy does it.” Lucy sighed, “no wonder the schools had to hire a full-time counsellor to deal with us all.”

  “But it did sell off a playing field to do it, and I’d much rather be running about than studying.”

  “Run off home,” a voice sneered behind her. The three girls jumped, turned, and Lucy’s heart sank when she realised that they were being followed by the group of white boys who’d harassed her before.

  “Just keep walking,” she advised her friends and they sped up.

  “Yeah, fuck off monkeys, fuck off back to India,” a boy shouted.

  “You’re not running fast enough,” one said, and he picked up a stone from the ground and threw it. The rock, small but strong, smacked into the back of Lucy’s shoulder, stinging and making her turn in alarm. She could see all the boys picking up stones now, and they were thrown at her and her friends, bouncing off them after striking hard.

  “Run,” Lucy gasped, and all three turned and ran as fast as they could, stones arcing around them, some hitting pavements and walls but some hitting their backs, one even hitting Lucy’s head.

  With lungs bursting the girls turned a corner and kept going, until they chanced a look behind and realised that they weren’t being followed. They stopped suddenly, bent over gasping for breath, and only now did Lucy reach a hand round to the stinging part of her scalp and find the hot, wet feeling of blood.

  “We need to get home,” a girl suggested.

  “How can we get around past them?” one asked.

  “We could call someone and get picked up?”

  Wobbly from the adrenaline, it was agreed this was the best course of action. Luckily, everyone carried phones these days.

  “What about the police?” one girl asked.

  “I dunno, I think we should talk to our parents first.”

  A police car pulled to a halt. The pair of uniformed officers inside looked out and said a silent thanks the rain had stopped. It was getting dark although it wasn’t late, just autumn, and they could see why they were here; an ambulance with a paramedic sat in the front with a civilian woman.