Page 113 of Unalive On Air

“That’s right, you’re not going anywhere, Peter,” I say, pointing to the magician. It’s cheesy as fuck, but I grew up watching cosy murder mysteries. I’ve always dreamed of delivering a line like that.

There’s only silence in the trophy room.

“Don’t be shy now. Step up to the mic, Peter. Say hello.”

Peter says nothing. He folds his arms and stares at me, but I notice he won’t look at anyone else. His tongue seems to trace something under his top lip, his eyes flick to Magnus, and then to the opposite wall. He’s going to make a run for it.

But suddenly, Magnus leans against that wall, effectively obstructing the magician, or at least letting him know there’s nowhere for him to run to. He didn’t even cross the space, he just appeared there. “Go take a seat, Peter Roskelly,” he growls.

Next to me a chair appears, and I can’t be certain, but I’m pretty sure it’s the toothpick-toupee monstrosity from Prestwich’s office.

Peter hesitates, staring at the chair for half a minute, maybe longer.

I lean over to the microphone. “For the benefit of the folk listening at home, our suspect is currently deciding whether he should move closer to me or take his chances with a literal four-hundred-and fifty-year-old demon summoned straight from the depths of . . . somewhere very weird and formidable, probably. Okay, now he’s moving towards the mic. That’s what I’d do, in all honesty. Peter, say hi.”

Peter licks his lips, glances at Jeanie, but remains silent.

Jeanie shakes her head. “Oh, Peter, what have you done?”

“Peter doesn’t feel particularly talkative at the moment, but hopefully we can change things for him a bit later. Let’s get into explaining his multitude of wrongdoings, shall we? Now, my apologies go out to Jean Johnson and Peter’s wife, Helga. I previously promised Jean I wouldn’t mention anything about this particular event, but for the rest of the crimes to make sense, I must explain this occasion.”

I look over at Jeanie for forgiveness, and she nods encouragingly.

“It’s okay, do what you need to do,” she says.

I walk the listeners through the night of the sword‑box illusion, though I leave out the parts where the women colluded to switch the roles of glamourous assistant and magician, and I make it seem like a happy accident Dalton had called for the swap. I pause the tale just after Peter’s corpse falls out of the trunk.

“Here’s where I’m going to lose a few listeners, if you haven’t already tuned out yet. Peter Roskelly is lying in a bloodied heap on the floor, or at least his body is. His ghost is standing idly beside it watching the chaos unfold. Peter had planned to murder his wife, and it backfired, but he’s dead now and he’s out of the woods. Or so he thought. There is something left to protect, and that’s Peter’s reputation. He’s spent a decade and a half carving the fantasy of The Remarkable Roskelly, and it’s one thing being known as the guy who died when a trick went awry, it’s another being famous for attempting to kill your wife but accidentally killing yourself instead.

“As a ghost, Peter watches his nineteen-year-old wife get placed in handcuffs. He overhears her telling the officers that she was certain he’d switched the swords beforehand. Am I right so far?”

Peter grunts in acknowledgment. It’s as good as a confession.

“Only it was Helga’s word against the evidence, and he couldn’t risk that sword being discovered, so he had to hide it. Here’s the tricky part. Ghosts can’t touch or move objects. You have to be an extremely powerful entity or have been deceased for a very long time to do those things, and having been dead only a short while, Peter hadn’t yet gained those skills. So he panicked and did something that in the ghost world is a bit of a moral no-no. He possessed somebody. Took control of their body.

“Possessions can last a few seconds, a few minutes, or as we will find out later, a few days. But Peter, being so new to the afterlife in that moment, had seized control of the nearest living person. That person just so happened to be Jean Johnson herself.

“He stole the sword, ran out of the hotel, down Jacob’s Ladder, and onto the beach. He then stashed the weapon in a tiny nook inside a cave.”

“Ohhhhh!” Stove says, like a light bulb has flicked on over his head. “I always wondered how that got there.”

I want to bop Stove over the noggin with his own microphone, but I’m using it at the moment, so that’ll have to wait.

“I called it Excalibur because it’s literally a sword in the stone,” he adds.

“Wait, okay . . .” Trystan says, but he shakes his head and doesn’t finish his sentence.

“Are you kidding me?” Pixie asks. “Excalibur is a real sword? Dude, every time you asked me if I wanted to come into your cave to look at it, I assumed you were talking about your wiener.”

“Honestly, same,” Trystan adds.

“The voices you’ve just heard belong to Stove MacLeod, Trystan Retallack . . .” My heart skips a beat at saying his full name out loud. “And Pixie Maynard. I’ll make introductions as we go if I need to. So, after using Jean’s body to hide the sword, Peter’s spirit leaves her a little bloodied and bruised on the beach for her long-term boyfriend to find her.

“Something worth knowing about possessions is that the possessee will not remember a thing afterwards. I’m told it’s like a drunken blackout moment. You simply have no memories of what happened during that period, and this I believe is the reason Peter didn’t kill Jeanie any earlier than he did.

“A long time passes—nine years in fact—and Helga Roskelly now works at The Paragon Hotel as the night manager. It’s nineteen ninety-three. The Sex Pigs from Hell are on an international tour, and out of a jam-packed month-long UK schedule, they only have one date in the county of Cornwall, which ends up being in the tiny seaside town of Helzephron.

“That night, after the sell-out concert, lead singer Pixie Maynard parties with her bandmates, the roadies, and a few lucky hotel staff. Including night manager Helga.”