The car’s some naff stretched job with back seats facing each other, and next to Bagport there’s a bloke with a camera round his neck, a bloke who looks like the Incredible Hulk’s mean uncle. He’s holding a gun too. Simon can’t do his trick on both men at once, but then I guess that’s the point.

  ‘Do you know who this is, Ringpull?’ says Bagport to the huge bloke. The huge bloke grunts. ‘It’s only the kid who sees dead people.’

  Ringpull glances over at his boss, and for a moment it almost looks like he has the brains to not believe what he’s hearing. But he just grunts again and goes on pointing his pistol. I look back at Bagport and it’s a surprise to see the man’s looking at me with genuine interest.

  ‘What, you believe me?’ I say. I’m not used to this.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know yet.’ Bagport takes a little sip from his glitzy cocktail, but one of the umbrellas falls out and leaves a sticky trail on his shiny suit. I’m thinking he’s trying to give me the Mr Big act with the flash car and everything, but all I can see are some serious style issues. Oh, and guns. I can see those too.

  ‘But what you did to me yesterday – knocking me out, and the swinging chandelier… There’s something about you I don’t get,’ he says. ‘But I will, kid, I will. I didn’t get to where I am today by turning my back on opportunities, and if you can see dead people… well, there’s an opportunity that doesn’t come along every day.’ And he gives me a sick leer. His teeth are even whiter than Simon’s.

  The car drives for a bit longer, and then pulls up. Outside it’s really dark, too dark for London, but in the light that spills from the car doors as they open I spot a crumbly brick wall, a mass of ivy and an ancient iron gate. The gate is open, and there’s someone there. I catch a glimpse of the terrified face of a girl, but she runs off when Ringpull cuffs her round the head. There are keys in the gate, and I just know they’ve been nicked from somewhere, on Bagsy’s orders.

  I’m pulled out of the car, and then Bagport’s next to me, his gun in my back. I can tell he’s carrying something else, but I can’t see what. He pushes me towards the gate and then, despite the gloom, I clock what’s through there.

  Gravestones.

  Hundreds of gravestones.

  With a shove, I’m through the gate and standing amongst them.

  ‘It’s Highgate Cemetery,’ Simon says in a whisper. ‘But what…?’ He gets no further than this though because now he’s staring behind me with a look of horror on his face.

  I turn slowly and in the dark Bagport shoves something heavy at me.

  ‘Okay, kid. You say you can talk to the dead? Well, here’s your conversation starter.’

  I look at my hands.

  I’m holding a spade.

  8

  THE DEAL

  (IF YOU CAN CALL IT THAT)

  ‘I love an antique, me,’ says Bagport, as we stroll in the graveyard at night. ‘I’ve got plenty of kids working for me, as you know, but it’s the ones who pinch the antiques I value the most.’

  I’m just stumping along, two guns trained on me, while Si drifts glumly at my side. At least Ems isn’t here to see this.

  ‘But did you know that right here in the city there are unclaimed antiques galore, just lying around, waiting to be picked up?’ Bagport waves at the cemetery around us. ‘Heh, those Victorians! They all died in the end. And they loved to be buried with their stuff, didn’t they, your Victorians? Silver watches, gold monocles, ivory false teeth… who needs to go to Egypt when you can raid tombs right here?’

  ‘You want to dig them up?’ I can’t help asking. ‘But that’s mad! There’s loads of ’em!’

  ‘I only need one hole tonight, kid.’ I can tell Bagport’s grinning by the sugar in his voice. We stop walking.

  ‘Here’s how things are,’ he says. ‘You know too much about me and that’s not a healthy situation. For you. Now, either you can really talk to the dead, in which case you’re valuable because you can ask around the stiffs and find me a coffin with a diamond tiara in it, or…’ He grinds the gun into my back. ‘… or it’s all a load of cobblers but at least you’ll have dug your own grave, in which case I can leave you here with Ringpull and go home for my kipper. Got it?’

  I’ll admit that my shoulders are sagging a bit by now. Well, it’s not looking good for yours truly, is it? I turn to Si, and I speak to him out loud, something I never normally do in front of other people. Right now though, there doesn’t seem to be any point in secrecy.

  ‘Well, buddy? Any options?’

  ‘Ha, look!’ Bagport says to Ringpull. ‘He’s doing it already!’

  Ringpull just grunts at what looks like empty night air to him.

  ‘Daniel.’ Simon’s talking urgently. ‘There’s no chance this can work. Even if I can locate a coffin six feet down, there’s no way I could see in the dark to tell you what’s in it. And while I could probably find a fellow ghost or two hereabouts, they are unlikely to know what they were buried with. It’s a mad scheme that can only lead to disappointment. I’m afraid your only option is to flee. I could probably knock one of them out, and perhaps with the dark…’

  But I hold my hand up. They’ve both got torches, they’ve both got guns. I wouldn’t get twenty paces.

  ‘Okay,’ I say to Bagport. ‘I’ll do it.’

  ‘Daniel, no!’ Simon wails. ‘I cannot help you. He’s expecting treasure, but he’ll kill you if you dig up nothing!’

  But I just nod my head. Fact is, all this talk about digging stuff up has given me an idea. And if I do find something, then Bagport’ll count me as one of his kids, won’t he? Which means I’ll be working for him. And if I’m working for him, then maybe I can find a way to bring him down for Ems. I’ll be like the enemy within. Or something. At the very least, I’ll live a bit longer, something I’m quite keen on doing, believe me.

  But it’s a shame I can’t say all this to Si, who clearly thinks I’ve gone mad when I ask Bagport for a torch.

  ‘Follow me,’ I say, and I stride off into the graveyard, in search of a dank cheerless grave I’ve seen once before. The two men stump along close behind me.

  We walk for quite a bit because it takes a while to get my bearings, but just as Bagport’s starting to lose patience, I stop. I’ve found it.

  I shine the torch across the white stone and the miserable-looking angel carved on top of it. In front there’s a broken stone grave slab and a tangle of thorns and nettles. I drive the spade into the ground and turn around.

  ‘Here,’ I say. ‘There’s something valuable buried here.’

  ‘You’re sure?’ I can tell Bagport’s struggling to decide if he’s wasting his time or not. ‘I didn’t hear you talk to anyone.’

  I shrug. ‘I’ve chatted to the gentleman buried here many times,’ I say, and in the chill quiet of the graveyard at night, I can see both Bagport and Ringpull are rattled by that. They get a bit closer to each other.

  ‘Daniel, are you quite sure about this?’ Si’s looking toward the gravestone with a hostile eye.

  I nod and look too. Across the peeling stone the torchlight picks out the leaden name:

  SILAS LUGUBRIAN

  1815 – 1882

  GENTLEMAN OF MIRACLES

  MASTER OF ILLUSION, UNTIL THE END

  And behind the stone, a look of unholy triumph across his sallow features, stands the ghost of the man himself.

  ‘Come to help old Silas, have you, boy?’

  9

  BURKE AND HARE

  HAD IT EASY

  In no time at all, Ringpull has dragged the great broken slabs off the grave, and yanked back armfuls of nettles and brambles with his bare hands. Then everyone’s looking at me. I can’t quite believe what’s happening, but I pick up the spade and dig it into the sodden earth anyway. I mean, what else can I do?

  I’m two spadefuls in when I realize I’m never going to dig all that way down on my own. It’s a joke, and a sick one at that. I turn to glare at Bagport, poised with my foot driving the spade into the ground, and…

  FLASH!

  I fall back, dazzled, lifting a clod of mud high with the spade, and…

  FLASH!

  For a moment I can’t see a thing, but then I remember the camera round Ringpull’s neck. Bagport’s got pictures now, and I’m getting more and more entangled in his web.

  I dig a bit more, and the ghost of Silas Lugubrian is standing over me.

  ‘The apparatus!’ he’s saying, rubbing his hands ‘Oh, my apparatus! I knew you would see sense, boy. A few little tweaks and it should work perfectly. I’m almost certain I know what went wrong. You’ll be the toast of your school show, and my reputation shall be restored!’

  I look up at him.

  ‘I’m not doing this for you,’ I snap. ‘So don’t go getting any ideas. Only an idiot would put their head in your apparatus after what happened to you.’

  ‘Kid, are you really talking to the ghost of the man buried here?’ says Bagport. I can tell he’s intrigued by it all, despite himself, and there’s even a tremble in his voice. ‘On the level now. What does he look like?’

  I stop digging and glance at Lugubrian. The ghost leers at me and makes his ugly whiskery head turn a complete circle. Slowly.

  ‘Be quiet and let me dig,’ I say to Bagport.

  I’m in a bad mood. But by now it’s clear to everyone that I’m going to take all night, and perhaps they’re ready for this, because at a word from his boss Ringpull seizes the spade and shoves me to one side. In a moment he’s powering down through the earth, flinging great lumps of the stuff out of the deepening hole.

  The man’s like a digging machine, and all I can do is sit on a fallen stone angel and watch, and hope that all Lugubrian’s whining about his ‘apparatus’ isn’t just bull.

  It’s nearly an hour before we hear the spade ‘thunk’ into something hard, and I know I’m about to find out.

  Bagport stands next to the hole and shines the torch down. For a moment I think I can escape while both men are distracted, but Bagport must think the same thing, because he grabs me.

  ‘Ringpull, get up here!’ he says, and before I know it I’m being sent down the hole myself. The spade’s still there. In the dry earth at the bottom there’s a hole, though what the hole’s really in is a wooden panel.

  It’s the lid of a coffin.

  ‘Get it clear, kid, and get the loot out,’ comes Bagsy’s voice from above. ‘But I warn you, if you’ve been wasting my time, Ringpull will start chucking the earth back in.”

  Ringpull grunts.

  The idea of being buried alive in the grave of Silas Lugubrian is not one of the highlights of the evening. Simon’s standing at the graveside too, his hands clamped firmly on the old magician’s ghostly shoulders, but he can’t send Lugubrian away now, not from his own patch. In any case, there’s nothing Si can do to stop the magician’s head from floating down to join me.

  ‘All these years!’ says the head, bobbing about. ‘All that waiting… finally! Go gently, boy. Oh, my poor old bones! Take the apparatus gently.’

  I expose the lid a bit more. Ringpull takes a few more pictures, and I’m imagining what would happen if those shots of yours truly robbing a Victorian tomb ever got shown round the school. Yeah, it’d be a scandal, but you know what? No one’d be too surprised.

  ‘Get on with it!’ shouts Bagport.

  I smack the spade down on the brittle wood, and a great split spreads down the coffin lid. Inside it’s dark, but I can only open the split wood a little way, there’s too much earth.

  ‘Put your hand in,’ says the sickly voice of Lugubrian. He’s enjoying this far too much. ‘I dare you.’

  No freakin’ way.

  I whack the spade down again and again, and the lip collapses a bit more.

  Inside I can see bones. It’s the skeleton of Silas Lugubrian, the top half anyway, exposed after well over a century. But there’s no sign of anything else buried there, and something’s not quite right.

  His skull is missing.

  Lugubrian’s ghostly head looks shocked for a moment, before swooping into the coffin and down towards his own bony feet, which are still out of sight. Then it comes zooming out again, roaring with indignation.

  ‘Blackguards!’ Lugubrian shouts. ‘The infamy of it!’

  Oh, crapsticks, I’m thinking. There’s nothing here after all!

  ‘Where’s your stupid apparatus?’ I shout at the head. ‘You said it’d be here!’ Up at the graveside there’s a stony silence as the two men look down at me, their pistols glinting in the torchlight.

  ‘It is there, you dolt!’ says the ghost. ‘Down by my feet, but – ’

  But I don’t want his ‘but’, I just want out of this stinking hole, so I take a deep breath and reach down into the black of the coffin. I close my hand over a cold metal something, and heave at it with all my strength. For a moment nothing happens, but then, with a crash-splatter of dry earth and wood, I fall back, and the something lands on top of me. It’s a mouldy old metal cage thing, about a foot square, with a rusted spring and a lever, all dark green with age and fungus. And there’s something inside.

  Yup. It’s Lugubrian’s skull.

  10

  JOHNNY SPARKO’S EARACHE

  It’s one in the morning when I get in, and my parents are furious. Apparently they almost called the police, which might have been a very good thing, though given what I’ve been up to, perhaps not. I manage to get away in the end and have a shower – I can’t think straight with Lugubrian’s grave muck under my fingernails. Afterwards, I’m pretty tired, but when I get back to my room, they’re standing there, all three of them, waiting for an explanation.

  ‘What?’ I say to Si. His arms are folded. So are Em’s. The ghost of Silas Lugubrian is fuming with rage and his head has gone into indignant orbit round my light bulb. You’d think he at least would be happy, but instead he’s whinging on and on.

  ‘Such an insult! Burying my head at my feet! But I’ll have the last laugh. We’ll see how they like it when – ’

  ‘Oh, be quiet!’ Simon shouts, and he bats the head across the room. It vanishes through the wall. The ectoplasm is puffing out of the hole in Si’s head again.

  ‘So, you’re working for him now?’ says Ems, in a voice so controlled it’s dangerous. ‘Bagport. You’re one of his kids. I came to you for help and you’ve betrayed me.’

  Can’t they give me a break? I’m in my dressing gown, for crying out loud. But it seems they’re not going to let it go till I give a little speech. You know, to rally the troops.

  ‘It’s cool,’ I say. ‘I’m getting close to Bagport. When he lets his guard down, I’ll sort him. Then you’ll be free, Ems. And Lugubrian, at least you’ve got part of what you wanted so you can leave me alone now. I doubt I’ll get a smile from you, Si, but I’m used to that.’

  The magician’s head swoops back in and snarls at me from near my ankles, like a whiskery bloodhound.

  ‘You will perform the trick at your school show?’

  ‘Nope,’ I say.

  ‘But, Daniel!’ cries Simon. ‘How can you get close to Bagport? Now he thinks you can find treasure in coffins, he’s expecting to go back to the cemetery tonight. I told you, I cannot help you locate treasure there. You happened to know about Lugubrian’s apparatus, but what will you tell Bagport next time? What can you possibly dig up tonight?’

  ‘And what’s he doing with my priceless apparatus anyway?’ barks the head.

  ‘How could you join him? A man like that?’ says Ems.

  I give up. I switch the light off, climb into bed, and pull the covers over my head.

  * * *

  The next day’s Friday and I slink off to school without a word to anyone. I sit at the back and keep my head down, because I’ve got a lot of thinking to do. I can tell Si’s still annoyed with me, so I give him the day off. He’ll catch up with me tonight, but first I’ve got to work a few things out.

  Si needs to learn to trust me.

  After school I tell my parents I’m staying at a friend’s house overnight, and they’re so pleased I even have a friend that they go with it.

  Evening arrives and I get something easy to eat and then head off for Bagport’s place.

  Yeah, I know what you’re thinking, and yup, it’s weird to just wander in there. But it turns out last night was a bit of a triumph for Mr Big and I’m the bee’s knees. You’d’ve thought that rusty lump of metal with Gubie’s head in it would be a disappointment, but Bagport was happy enough with it. Especially since it turns out the cage wasn’t tarnished at all, just grubby. It’s actually gold-plated.

  When I get there, Si’s waiting for me, with Ems. Lugubrian’s there too, grinding his teeth. I’ve got a horrible feeling we’re a team from here on in.

  Great.

  ‘I don’t suppose I can talk you out of this?’ says Simon.

  ‘Nah. You’ll just have to trust me instead.’

  ‘Hah!’ barks Lugubrian.

  I knock on the metal door behind Bagport’s club, and Ringpull opens it. He grunts, clips me round the ear and then pulls me in. We’re going to have a falling out, Ringpull and me, but I let it go for now.

  The corner of the storeroom has been cleared, and there’s someone there I haven’t seen before, a small nervous man with a goatee and no hair. He’s got a toolbox open by his feet and on a tripod in front of him is Lugubrian’s metal cage. You can really tell it’s gold now, and Goatee Man’s buffing it up and scraping gunk out of it.

  He’s not looking too happy, but then Gubie’s skull grinning at him while he works might have something to do with that.

  ‘That’s a nice paperweight,’ I say, and the man looks at me like he doesn’t know if I should be there. ‘What a lovely hobby.’

  Lugubrian’s head detaches from his body and circles the man and the box.

  ‘My apparatus!’ he says. ‘What’s he doing to it?’

  Really, really weirdly, Goatee Man turns his head like he almost heard something, and looks confused. Then he turns to me and says, ‘I’m just cleaning it. Getting it working again. For sale,’ he says.

 

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