Simon Green - Spirits from Beyond

“She’ll tell you herself,” said Heather. “When she’s ready.”

And then she stopped typing and turned around in her chair to look at them thoughtfully, catching them all by surprise.

“I did hear,” she said, “that Kim is back.”

“Yes,” said JC. “She is.”

Heather waited a moment, until it became clear JC wasn’t going to say anything else. “Then why isn’t she here with you?”

“Sorry,” said JC. “That’s strictly need-to-know.”

Heather gave him a long, hard look and turned her attention to Happy. “I did also hear that you are back on the mother’s little helpers again.”

“You leave him alone!” Melody said immediately.

“It’s all right, Melody,” said Happy. “I can look after myself.” He smiled easily at Heather. “You do realise, I could slip absolutely anything into your coffee mug. And you’d never know until it was far too late.”

Heather looked at him coldly and moved her coffee mug to the other side of her desk.

They all looked round as the outer door flew open, and a thoroughly annoyed middle-aged man in a very expensive three-piece suit burst in. He stomped over to Heather’s desk and scowled at her, conspicuously ignoring the three waiting field agents. He had the look of a man who had lunched not wisely but too well, on many occasions, and for some reason had stretched his remaining thinning hair across his bald pate in a tragically unconvincing comb-over. His face was flushed, his eyes were blazing, and he had a mean, pinched little mouth. He planted both hands on Heather’s desk, so he could lean forward and glare right into her face.

“I am the newly appointed Minister for Supernatural Affairs!” he said loudly. “As in appointed first thing this morning! I didn’t even know we had a Ministry for Supernatural Affairs! I was promised Education, or Health, one of the big sexy top jobs, come the next reshuffle of the Cabinet. And this is what I get! Well, if the Prime Minister thinks he can shut me up by pushing me out into the backwaters, he’s got another think coming! I know how to get noticed. . If I have to run this half-baked Ministry, whatever it is, I will put my personal stamp on things! Oh yes. . I’ll reorganise this place till people’s heads spin and get everyone doing things my way! Till they’re afraid to do anything without checking with me first! I demand to see Catherine Latimer, right now, so she can brief me. And so I can brief her on all the changes that will be taking place around here!”

Heather smiled at him, politely, not budging an inch. “Do you have an appointment?”

“I don’t need an appointment! I am the newly appointed Minister, and I am in charge of this. . Department, or whatever it is.”

“No, Minister,” said Heather. “You answer to Catherine Latimer, not the other way round. It’s a common misconception, among the newly appointed. The Boss will call you in when she needs to speak to you. Go back to your office and wait.”

“Now you listen to me, young lady, this is precisely the sort of attitude I intend to put a stop to!” The Minister’s voice was rising sharply now. “All Departments in this Government answer to the Ministers of the elected Government, not to some jumped-up civil servant!”

“Not here,” said Heather. “The Carnacki Institute was founded on the orders of Her Most Royal Majesty, Queen Elizabeth I, in 1587. So we are therefore a Royal Prerogative, and not a Government Department. Which is why we’re situated here, in Buck House. Strictly speaking, we answer to the sitting Monarch, not the Prime Minister. Because all successive Governments have preferred it that way. Don’t ask; don’t want to know. Your Prime Minister really doesn’t like you any longer, does he? Or he would have warned you. .”

“This is worse than I thought,” said the Minister. “I know all about career civil servants and their own private fiefdoms. . Well, if this is a fiefdom, it’s going to be my fiefdom! Following my orders! This kind of sloppy thinking and wilful independence has no place in modern Government! Now you do as you’re told, young lady, if you like having a job! I demand to speak to Catherine Latimer, immediately!”

“I’m afraid that these waiting field agents have the only appointment today,” said Heather.

The Minister looked at JC, Happy, and Melody properly for the first time, and gave no indication of being in any way impressed. He sniffed loudly and turned his scowl back to Heather.

“They can wait. They’re nothing more than little people.”

JC smiled at Happy. “There you are. It’s official. We are little people. Doesn’t that make you feel all safe and protected, knowing we’re too small to be any real danger to anyone?”

“I’ve always wanted to be little people,” said Happy. “Too small to be noticed by the powers that be.”

“Size isn’t everything,” said Melody. “Except for when it is.”

The Minister glared at them. “I have never found humour funny. You can be sure I’ll be looking into your files very thoroughly.”

“Good look finding them,” said JC.

“Right,” said Happy. “I’ve been trying to hack into them for years; and I know my name. Which you haven’t asked.”

“Tell me your names!” snapped the Minister.

“Jeremy Diego,” said JC.

“Monica Odini,” said Melody.

“Ivar ap Owen III,” said Happy.

The Minister looked at them suspiciously. He could sense they’d slipped something past him, but he couldn’t tell what. So he went back to frowning at Heather, regarding her as an easier target for bullying and intimidation. “You tell Latimer I’m coming in. And open up that damned door right now, or I’ll send for some security men to come in here and break it down!”

Heather sighed and pushed her chair back from her desk. JC felt an immediate need to hide behind or possibly under something. Heather came out from behind her desk, and the Minister smiled, thinking he’d won the argument-the fool. Heather strode right up to the Minister, grabbed his nose between the middle fingers of her closed left hand, and twisted the Minister’s nose savagely. He let out a howl of such pain and misery it must have been heard three corridors away. Heather twisted the Minister’s nose back and forth unmercifully while he cried like a baby; and then she let go and stepped back. The Minister raised both hands to his bleeding nose and looked at Heather with wide-eyed horror. And then he turned and ran from the Waiting Room. Heather closed the door behind him, went back to her desk, and resumed typing. Not appearing in the least disturbed or even out of breath.

JC looked at Happy and Melody. “You have to know how to talk to these people.”

There was a long pause. Melody went back to her game of Angry Chavs, Happy went back to scribbling exaggerations in his note-book, and JC went back to staring thoughtfully at the portraits on the walls, trying to catch one of them not looking at him. Time passed.

“Come on, Heather,” JC said finally. “Help us out. What sort of mood is the Boss in? Should we have brought flowers or updated our wills?”

“You’d know better than me,” said Heather. “She summoned the three of you here directly instead of going through me and this office.” She didn’t actually stop typing, but JC couldn’t help noticing that she did look a bit put-out. “And that’s not like her! The Boss is normally a stickler for following protocol. I think something’s worrying her. She’s hiding things from me. She’s hiding things from everyone.”

“Situation entirely normal, then,” said JC.

And that was when the door slammed open, again, and the newly appointed Minister for Supernatural Affairs stormed back in. There was dried blood all down the front of his nice suit, and two thick tufts of cotton wool protruded from his nostrils. He was accompanied this time by half a dozen large and heavily armed security types. The Minister struck an aggrieved pose before Heather’s desk and pointed a quivering finger at her.