Page 33 of Unalive On Air

“He’s only thirty-nine,” Jazz whispers.

“Library card, debit card, membership to Swindon Nerd Emporium. What’s that, a game shop?” he says, rifling through my wallet. “Three credit cards. Possibly in a bit of debt.”

I say nothing. Don’t look at the other ghosts. I haven’t had a proper job in a long time, and credit has become a crutch for me to afford groceries and electricity.

“Oh, what’s this? An employee ID lanyard. Swindon Sounds. Isn’t that a radio station?” Davies appears to be talking to himself.

Jazz hums in agreement.

“And a business card for Gerald Pickett. London number. Logo looks like a funny blob wearing sunglasses. Exor . . . something. Exercise? Who knows.”

“ExorSquad?” Jazz says, pulling the lapel of my overalls up and scratching the blood off the lettering with her latex‑covered thumbnail. “I think he works for them. Worked for them.”

Davies drops my wallet into a clear plastic baggie and places it on the floor. He’s in my holdall next. “Look at this,” he says, and from my bag he pulls out a handful of blister‑packs of pills.

“What are they?” Jazz says.

“Antidepressants. Poor guy must have been going through it,” Davies replies, and this time he drops them into a brown envelope.

“No they’re fucking not,” I say. I try to grab the package but my fingers sail right through the card. “I’m not on antidepressants. Those are laxatives!” Everyone’s looking at me, but try as I might, I can’t seem to stop my next words. It’s as though my embarrassment will diminish if I can justify my need for softer stools. “Sometimes I have trouble . . . going.”

But the rising cringe doesn’t stop me from focusing on the finer details. Sergeant Dave Davies is lying about what my pills are for, and there’s only one explanation. He’s trying to back up his suicide angle. Not that there’s anything wrong with taking pills for depression, but there’s definitely something wrong with falsifying evidence.

He continues bagging up my stuff, occasionally pointing out things to bolster his “Gary was depressed as fuck and that’s why he killed himself” account.

“According to his journal on the desk, I’d say this guy had recently been fired from his radio job.”

“Look at this receipt. Who buys Tesco Value teabags? A desperate man, that’s who.”

“Have you ever seen a more holey pair of socks? Why doesn’t he just buy some new pairs? Unless he’s broke.”

Jazz writes none of this down in her notepad, but she snaps a few cheeky shots on her phone when Davies’s back is turned. She’s as suspicious of him as I am, and I love that.

Her boot crunches on the circle of salt I drew before I went to bed, and she follows the trail around the broken bedframe. The majority of the line has been swallowed by my bleed out, but there’s still a very visible and clearly deliberate ring. She glances over at Davies, who’s fiddling with my DJ controller and not paying her the slightest bit of attention.

“Occult, question mark?” Stove says, reading the new note as Jazz writes it.

“I’m just going to move you a little to check under the other pillow,” Jazz whispers to me. To my body.

“What’s that?” Davies says without lifting his head.

“Nothing, I was just talking to Gary.”

Davies waves her away like chatting to corpses is an everyday occurrence.

From the left side of the bed, Jazz pulls out the blood‑crusted ExorSquad manual and the collection of police reports I’d compiled on Imogen Savona. A photograph of a thirty‑year‑younger Davies frowns up from the first page. “What were you investigating?” She whispers to me.

Davies doesn’t look up.

Jazz glances over her shoulder, folds the page with her boss’s photo on, and tucks it into her breast pocket. “Is this what got you killed?”

nine

Man Down

We wait for Angel’s men to collect my body. A tall, skinny guy and a short, fat guy lift me onto a gurney, place a stiff black sheet over me, and wheel me out.

And that’s it. There’s no longer a corpse in the room with us. Just eight ghosts, Helga the front of house manager, and a hell of a mess for someone else to clean up. Sergeant Davies packed up all my belongings, including all of my ExorSquad kit and my recording gear, so besides the gallons and gallons of congealed blood and the odd piece of bone or soft tissue, there’s no trace of me.