4 Beyond Belief Read online

  There was a strong smell of chlorine as they passed the spa with its Jacuzzi and decent-size swimming pool, the blue water lit up even at night. If Emily could have one wish (after world peace), it would be to have the use of a private swimming pool. If she had a pool at home, she could come down at night and swim in the blue-lit darkness alone, instead of negotiating the lanes at the local public pool, clogged with splashy showoffs and slow zigzaggers, and with balls of hair and lost contact lenses drifting along the bottom.

  The Lost Property Office was an inviting jumble of umbrellas, false limbs, false teeth, paperback books, mobile phones, keys, cuddly toys, socks and coats. Emily could have spent all night in there examining each item and trying to guess the story of how it had ended up here. But when she turned to the porter to make some remark about the contents of this treasure trove, she could see he didn’t share her fascination. Perhaps more importantly, there was no sign of her notebook.

  The night porter locked up again without saying I told you so. “Do you know your way back up to the lobby? Got to finish doing my rounds.” He pointed his thumb in the other direction, to show where he was headed.

  Emily did know the way. She also knew that if you were exploring a haunted house—or a haunted hotel—you should never split up. But she had put the poor man to enough trouble already. And this place wasn’t haunted, just a bit creepy at night. As she approached the spa and saw the blue glow of the pool, it now seemed less like an unattainable luxury and more like the kind of place where a mad scientist would incubate experimental monstrosities. And then…and then her head hurt and it all went black. But not before Emily had time to remember, absurdly, that Bobby Blue Suit had told her to call for Shirley if she was ever in trouble. What good would that do? She pictured Shirley’s long, glossy auburn coat. She pictured Shirley’s long, inquisitive nose, her intelligent brown eyes and her extremely short legs. Run and get help, Shirley! How long would that take? There was a reason why they didn’t have miniature dachshunds working for the emergency services.

  Blackness. Had she fainted?

  Not awake, not dead, not dying, not sleeping. What was this sensation? She had flown before in dreams. She wasn’t flying. She was moving. She could smell chlorine. Was she swimming? She wasn’t swimming. She was being dragged along the floor.

  She could hear barking. She thought of her dog, Jessie. What would Jessie think if she knew she had been passed off as a spirit guide and Emily a paranormal investigator? But Jessie had never formed an opinion about anything Emily had said unless the words dinner, walk or treat appeared in the sentence.

  A wet nose, snuffling, warm furry ears, licking sounds, the tinkling of a name tag against the metal buckle of a collar, prawny breath. Either Emily had died and gone to heaven and Jessie was there—in which case yay for there being dogs in heaven—or Jessie had reappeared on earth, in which case yay for unexplained paranormal events. Or maybe there was another explanation? One which eluded Emily momentarily.

  “Shirley!”

  Is my name Shirley? I think it might be. It’s something like that.

  “Shirley! Oh my goodness, Emily!”

  No, it’s Emily. That’s it.

  “Emily, you’ve fainted, doll.” A man’s voice. “Don’t try to get up. Stay still a minute. Can you open your eyes? Oi, Elvis, will you get away from that! Stop licking that blood.”

  Emily kept her eyes closed. “Is it my blood?”

  “You’ve cut your head where you went down. Good luck you didn’t go six inches further or you’d have been headfirst into the pool. Eddie! It’s not a butcher’s shop! It’s poor Emily’s blood. These dogs, honestly. They get me up at least once every night for a tiddle. Worse than having a baby. Still, if I hadn’t been passing, you’d have been there for hours, I’m guessing. You were sparked out cold. Did you want me to call a doctor, or can you sit up?”

  Emily sat up and opened her eyes. She saw Bobby Blue Suit and his dogs, so she knew her sight was OK. She touched her head. There was a cut by her eye which was bleeding, and a painful lump on the back of her head. The lump was the size and shape of an egg when she touched it. “It’s hot in here.”

  “I expect that’s what made you faint. You’ve been rushing around, up and down stairs. Then that business with the dead body.”

  Emily remembered what had happened to Trina. She began to cry.

  Bobby bent to hug her. “Awww, bless you. Delayed shock.” His three dogs tried to jump in his lap as he crouched down to comfort Emily, wagging their tails and nudging each other for the best position. “What were you doing down here? Not thinking of going skinny-dipping?”

  “I can’t have been going to the pool. Can I? I do like swimming…I can’t remember, Bobby. I was in the bar…”

  “I saw you in there. I don’t remember you drinking. You’re not drunk, are you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I’ll take you to the hospital. Shouldn’t be too long to wait in Accident and Emergency this time of night. Not in Torquay. Mind you, Friday night is fall-down-drunk-and-split-your-head-open night in most country towns, so I could be wrong.”

  “I’m OK. I don’t need stitches, do I?”

  Bobby peered at the cut on her head. “No. That’ll heal up nicely. You’ll get a nasty bruise, mind.”

  She was cold and wet from lying on the tiles by the side of the pool. “You know what? I’m just going to go up to bed. Thanks, Bobby.”

  “I hope we won’t get into trouble for being by the pool. Animal fur and streaks of blood, it looks like a fox has been after a chicken in here. Eddie and Elvis have taken care of most of the blood. Maybe we can blame the fur on a hirsute guest.”

  As they went up the stairs, Emily thought she owed Bobby one thing at least. “You told me I should call Shirley if I was in trouble. Do you remember? I did think of her as I went down, just before I hit the tiles.”

  “And next thing you knew, you saw Shirl. Aw, I’m glad you told me, Emily.”

  Emily was glad, too, when she saw how happy it made him. And then, when she was treated to five minutes of Bobby’s special dog voice as he congratulated Shirley for being so clever, she began to regret it. Almost everyone who has a dog also has a dog voice that they use to communicate with their pet. Too often it’s a baby-talk voice, incorporating lots of silly made-up words, and it should never be used in public, especially not when climbing the stairs of a historic hotel with a crying, bleeding, snot-nosed girl who thinks she has just fainted and doesn’t know the half of it.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  WHY?

  Emily woke up with blood on her pillow, a cut lip, a cut and swollen right cheek, and a black eye. She stepped gingerly out of bed and hobbled to the bathroom to look in the mirror, where she saw a prizefighter face. With her fingertips, she felt the tender egg-shaped lump on the back of her skull. It was huge! And painful to touch. Her mouth was dry and she had a groggy, hungover feeling. Was she a bit dizzy? Yes, probably. But she would live. When she was at home in London, whenever she had to run for the bus, she was glad she wasn’t an international spy, running, running, running all over the place to get away from danger. Now she was glad she wasn’t really a future crimes investigator, with a badge and a gun and enemies, getting beaten up all the time. Come Tuesday morning she’d be back to work in an office and, though the work was boring, at least it wasn’t painful. Nobody ever died of boredom, no matter how many claimed they thought they might.

  It was Saturday, the start of the conference, the big day for Edmund’s paranormal challenge. Fortunately it was still early—there was something important she had to do before anything else. She had a shower and washed her hair and washed the blood off her face, and then she got dressed and went downstairs.

  She tried to sneak past Mandy Miller at Reception, but Mandy wanted a chat. “Whatever happened to you? Are you all right?”

  “I fainted last night. I’m a bit dizzy, but I’ll be all right.” Emily touched the lump on the b
ack of her head to see if it had got any bigger. She thought perhaps it had.

  “Dehydration. That’s what made you faint. Too many people think they’re hungry when they’re thirsty, then they keel over. Happened to my sister in Tesco and she went headfirst and knocked over their Easter egg display. They wanted to make her pay for it. Thought she was drunk! Make sure you drink plenty of water today. You want me to call a doctor?”

  Emily smiled and shook her head, very slowly.

  “Terrible about that girl, wasn’t it? Much too young to take her own life.” Mandy leaned forward and spoke in a confidential whisper, so Emily had to lean in to hear what she had to say. “I wondered if it was mind control. Someone took over her mind and made her do it.”

  “That’s quite a theory. Is there somewhere round here I can buy dog treats?”

  “The Pound Shop. It’s two streets down on the left. You can get two big bags for—”

  “OK!”

  “For a pound.”

  “Thank you.” Emily went through the glass doors into the early morning air.

  When she got back to the hotel, Emily joined Dr. Muriel and Gerald for breakfast in the dining room. They were at a large table near the window overlooking the sea, scoffing down bacon, eggs and sausages, mushrooms, toast and grilled tomatoes. Dr. Muriel’s hair was wet from her morning swim. Gerald was engrossed in the crossword in his newspaper. He gasped when he looked up and saw Emily’s injured face. He and Dr. Muriel winced sympathetically as she told them how she came by her injuries.

  At nearby tables, the academics who had come to take part in the conference were making last-minute amendments to their speeches, fueling themselves for the day with plates piled high with waffles, pancakes, omelettes and, of course, the nation’s favorite: the full English breakfast. Emily, a vegetarian, was eating sheep’s yoghurt with honey. It seemed that she was the only one in the dining room who saw the breakfast buffet as an invitation rather than a challenge.

  “It’s just as well the meals are included at a set rate in the hotel’s conference package,” said Gerald, holding his newspaper flat and filling in seven across in his crossword with a pencil. “These people would bankrupt us otherwise.”

  Joseph Seppardi was having a whispered argument with Sarah and Tim at the next table. “I won’t do it!”

  The three of them were with Madame Nova, still in her wheelchair. Whereas Sarah, Tim and Joseph were animated, whispering fiercely among themselves, it seemed that someone had forgotten to switch Madame Nova on. Her head hung slackly and she had not touched any of the food Sarah had fetched from the buffet and put in front of her. She was dressed flamboyantly in a faux leopard-skin cloak with a faux fur trim around the hood, and sunglasses. But the outfit contrasted with the desiccated body within, a dried corncob dressed up for the Mexican Day of the Dead. It was impossible not to stare at that outfit, though for politeness’ sake Emily pretended to be looking instead at the condiments that had been set in the middle of the table: the miniature bottle of tomato ketchup, the jars of horseradish sauce and English mustard, the salt and pepper. But even staring at those yielded a reward because, as Sarah struggled with the tomato ketchup bottle—it was apparently new and had never been opened—Madame Nova snatched it from her, wordlessly, and twisted the top off it effortlessly before giving it back. Impressive!

  Emily wasn’t the only one fascinated by their breakfast arrangements. “Excuse me,” Gerald said, leaning over to take a picture of Tim’s brimful breakfast plate. “Do you mind? I forgot to do this before I started eating.” He put the photo up on Twitter. Great start to the conference. Full English breakfast. And a full day ahead. #BeliefandBeyond.

  “No sign of Peg?” asked Emily.

  “Perhaps last night was too much for her,” said Gerald. “She was very upset. And if you’re feeling dizzy from running up and down the stairs, then think of the toll it must have taken on Peg. She’s a big woman and she has a few years on you.”

  “Should I go and look for her? Make sure she’s all right?”

  “Let her rest,” said Gerald. “If she’s anything like me, she won’t want to be disturbed by a knock on the door or a phone call if she’s asleep.”

  “Oh,” said Emily, remembering. “I got a phone call last night while I was asleep. That’s why I went downstairs.”

  “Morning!” Edmund turned up from the breakfast buffet with two croissants balanced on his plate. “Blimey, Emily! I hope the other fella came off worse.” He took a seat next to Gerald and tapped at an unsolved clue in Gerald’s cryptic crossword. “Nine down is Albert Camus.”

  Chris—buttermilk pancakes and mixed seasonal berries—raised his eyebrows sympathetically at the state of Emily’s battered face.

  “I still don’t know exactly how you did that trick,” Emily said, to steer the conversation away from her hideous injuries.

  “Just between us?” Edmund smiled. “It’s impossible for a man to walk on water, isn’t it? And it’s impossible for a man to get from place A to place B in the wink of an eye—”

  “Took a bit longer than that last night,” said Chris.

  “Were there two men?” Emily looked from Edmund to Chris. “Two men of a similar build. One in place A, one in place B, both wearing a top hat and a cape. The one in place A takes advantage of an apparent fault with the flickering lights to discard the recognizable clothing and hide in the water. The one in place B gets dressed up and shows himself.”

  Edmund and Chris grinned at her, though they didn’t say she was right.

  Gerald pushed his plate away. “It was a clever trick, gentlemen. I’m sure you could have got more people to see it if you’d told people to be at the pier for 7:00 p.m.”

  “Advertising the start time would have formalized it,” said Chris. “People would have been prepared for the trick, looking to see if it was any good, trying to guess how it worked. But because they seemed to stumble on it, first they were asking what they were seeing, then they were inviting others to come and look—and telling each other they had to be quick because it was happening now and it would be over soon. The people who were doing that had become involved. The outcome was important to them; they wanted other people to see what they were seeing and share in the experience. They felt they were part of it. So they weren’t walking up and down looking for the joins, they were too busy telling other people what they should expect to see. They helped set the stage for us. Half the people who’ll be talking about it today won’t even have seen it, but they’ll feel like they did. The people who did see it will exaggerate, to make what they saw seem more spectacular, their experience more worthwhile, their memory more valuable.” He shrugged, pleased with himself. “Who says you need a TV or a computer to broadcast an experience like this? You can transmit it from brain to brain, from mouth to mouth, with a bit of planning.”

  “So this wasn’t about the trick, so much as what happened around it?” Emily asked.

  “You got it, Emily.” Edmund smiled at her, enjoying the opportunity to talk about his work. “And we won’t be able to measure how successful it was until a few days from now—maybe even as far away as next year—when we come back and find out whether everyone’s still talking about it.”

  “I don’t think we’ll be coming back to Torquay with Belief and Beyond,” said Gerald. “I’m hoping to get sponsorship to hold it in Dubai.”

  “Good idea.” Madame Nova creaked into life again—she and Tim and Sarah and Joseph had all been listening. “Go wherever you like with it. Just don’t come back to Torquay.”

  There was a polite silence while everyone waited to see if she had anything more to contribute. She didn’t. So they turned back to Edmund.

  He smiled a subdued version of his charming smile. “Ach, look. It doesn’t seem right to keep talking about my trick. I want to celebrate, but that kid last night, Trina…”

  “I need cheering up,” said Dr. Muriel.

  “We all do,” said Sarah.

  Edmun
d’s reticence was genuine, but the words soon came tumbling out as he looked from face to face, sharing his enthusiasm about the success of the trick. “The whole event was a kind of enhanced storytelling. When you listen to someone tell a story, it can be a compelling experience, can’t it? But here, instead of one storyteller, we get dozens, all embellishing the same truth, all helping to make the experience more exciting for friends and strangers by adding their own little flourishes to the tale. Chris’s idea. I’d consulted him about some of the street theater aspects of the show—how we were going to handle the discoverability, create the buzz. When my technical manager was called away at short notice, Chris was a natural choice. There aren’t many people who could do this job. But I knew Chris and trusted him. If I didn’t have Chris, I couldn’t have done the trick.”

  “The whole thing was a performance. And the great thing was that half the town had the chance to take part and make it into something special.” Chris smiled as he looked around the table, though there was a sympathetic downward hitch of his mouth as he took in Emily’s bruises.

  “Two lumps,” said Dr. Muriel, stirring her coffee thoughtfully.

  Emily passed her the white china bowl filled with cubes of white and brown sugar, wondering why it was only fancy hotels that served sugar like that.

  “Not the sugar. Two lumps on your head. If you got that one on your cheek when you hit the floor as you went down, then why have you got one on the back of your head?”

  “How do you know about the one on the back of my head?”

  “You keep touching it to see if it hurts, and then scrunching up your face because it does. I was wondering when you’d learn to stop touching it—I think we’d get quicker results with monkeys in a lab, though I don’t believe in experimenting on animals, so we’ll never know—and then I started wondering why you had two lumps.”

  “What is the explanation?” asked Gerald with a scientist’s interest. “Did she bounce?”