“What is it, Bub? I’m a busy man.”
Beelzebub searched frantically for someone to vaporize, but the winkle picker had wisely skipped out of range.
“Can’t a friend call to say hi?”
“Yes, a friend could. You, on the other hand, are not a friend to anyone except your own miserable self.”
Beelzebub’s face was contorted with rage, but his voice remained jovial. “Hey, Pietro, I’m hurt. After all I’ve done for you.”
“Do you have to speak in tongues, Bub? Why do you people always have to do that? It’s so . . . Hollywood. Insecure, if you ask me.”
One day, gatekeeper, thought Beelzebub. One day. “Say, listen, Pete. That Irish girl.”
“What about her?”
“Did she ever turn up at the Pearlies?”
“Why? Did your Soul Man come back empty-handed?”
“What Soul Man? I’m bleeding here, Peter. Injured.”
“Hrummph,” grunted Peter doubtfully.
“Well, have you seen her?”
There was a long pause. Peter was wrestling with his duty. Saints are not allowed to lie, not even to demons.
“No,” he sighed eventually. “No sign of her yet.”
Beelzebub grinned. “Well, I’m sure she’ll seal her own fate eventually without any help from us.”
“I’m sure,” grunted Peter, terminating the call.
The demon danced a delighted jig. The game was still on. He walked briskly to the wall-mounted intercom.
“Central?” he said, his mouth brushing the speaker.
“Central here,” replied the voice of an Oscar-winning actress. Oscar winners, the place was packed with them. They parted with their souls nearly as easily as computer programmers.
“This is Number Two.” He hated that code name. Why did the Master insist on it? It was almost as if he wanted his lieutenant to be laughed at.
“Go ahead, Number Two.”
Beelzebub couldn’t be sure, but he thought he heard muffled sniggering. “Get Myishi down to the holding cells.”
“Yes, sir. Right away, sir.”
“Oh, and tell him to bring his toolbox.”
The security had been beefed up considerably. A chain-link fence ran the entire perimeter of the stadium, with the exception of the security kiosk and the twenty-foot gates. Security cameras buzzed and whirred from atop concrete poles.
“Told you,” said Meg, in that teeth-grinding tone children are so proficient at.
Lowrie decided that this would be a good time to light the cigar. “So, you were right for once. What are you going to do about it?”
“The same as we did with Dessie. Bit of a brain fidget with the guards, then open sesame, in we go.”
Lowrie took a long pull on the cigar. The glowing ember lit his face like a rush of blood.
“Nope. That’s no good.”
Meg frowned, creasing the ghostly freckles across the bridge of her nose.
“No good? And why’s that? Too simple, is it? Or maybe you’d like to give the security guards a kiss too?”
“I have to break in,” explained Lowrie. “It has to be risky. That’s the whole point.”
“I don’t know what breaking and entering is going to do to my aura. That’s what got me into this mess in the first place.”
“You’ll know soon enough. Now, let’s go!”
Before Meg could protest, Lowrie set off hobbling across the road, his cigar bobbing like a drunken firefly. They followed the fence around to a shadowy area, backing onto a street of terraced houses.
“This is the spot,” gasped Lowrie, a hand clasped over his heart.
“Go on, have another cigar, why don’t you?”
The old man fired the butt into the muck, stubbing it out with the heel of his new loafers.
“You’re right. No point speeding up the . . . process.”
“So this is where you went over. Fifty years ago.”
“More.”
From the base, the fence seemed huge. The Mount Everest of fences. Insurmountable. And even if you did somehow manage to scale the heights, there was a friendly closed-circuit camera waiting to immortalize your mug at the top.
Lowrie coughed. It started small, but built to a shuddering crescendo, racking his whole body. He could feel his heart booming in his ears. It reminded him just how sick he was. Meg floated down to his level.
“Are you sure about this, partner?”
Lowrie’s coughing trailed off to a rumbling wheeze. “Sure? Yes. While I still can.”
“Okay, so. But at least let me take out that camera.
In all fairness, they didn’t have those before the war.”
Lowrie spat a lump of phlegm onto the grass. “I suppose so.”
Meg floated to the top of the fence. The metallic camera buzzed at her like an inquisitive robot.
Camera, she thought, twisting the lense sharply to the right, film another part of the lane for a while.
From above, Lowrie looked even more pathetic. Even a new suit couldn’t disguise the droop in his shoulders, or the shake in his hands. It was obvious, even to a teenager, that he couldn’t go on like this. His six months could become weeks, even days, if he kept going at this rate.
“Lowrie, you should be in a hospital,” she said gently, alighting from the fence top.
“No,” snapped the old man, a sheen of cold sweat shining on his forehead. “What can I do in a bed? The same as I’ve done all my life. Nothing! Now, are you going to help me or not?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know if I should.”
“Worried about your precious aura?”
“No. For some stupid reason I was worried about you.” The pair of them sulked for a while then. Apparently that’s an ability you hold on to even when you’re dead. Meg had the advantage, though, because she couldn’t feel the bitter wind swirling up her trouser leg.
“Well?” said Lowrie eventually, disgusted that he’d been first to break the frosty silence.
Meg sighed. “Move over.”
The possession was easier every time. As though she knew which part of the brain to sit in. No messing about with embarrassing old memories or disgusting bodily functions she wanted nothing to do with. But it was harder too—in a way, Meg could feel her energy waning; it was like being out of breath, but only in your head. (And if you’re a spirit reading this, that will make perfect sense to you.)
She flexed Lowrie’s fingers and toes. They were as stiff as rusted gates.
“This is not going to be easy.”
The fence stretched above her, seeming much higher now that she was earthbound. The holes between the links were diamond-shaped and tiny. No way Lowrie’s big clodhopping shoes were going to fit in there. She took them off and knotted the laces around her neck. The muck instantly saturated her socks and feet.
“That’s cold,” she giggled. “I remember cold!”
“Will you get on with it!” shouted Lowrie from inside his own head. “Before you give me pneumonia!”
“All right, grumpy. Keep your hair on!” She patted the crown of Lowrie’s head. “Oops, too late.”
Messing and joking aside, it was a daunting task.
Even if Meg had the use of her own teenage body, she wasn’t sure if she could do it. She hooked her fingers through the wire and started climbing.
Halfway up, the pain started in her joints. It shot through her limbs like lashes from an invisible whip. And the wind picked up, rattling the links and almost dislodging the fence’s grimacing passenger.
“At least it’s not rai—”
“Don’t say it!” warned Lowrie.
Meg didn’t say it. She had never believed in luck, good or bad. But these days she was prepared to believe in absolutely anything. After an age of grunting and sweating, she managed to straddle the top bar.
“You sweat like a pig, old man,” she muttered. “This shirt is ruined.”
His heart was throbbing, too. Her presence wasn??
?t enough to completely pacify it anymore. She had no doubt that if Lowrie had attempted that climb on his own, he’d be a corpse in the mud right now.
Meg paused at the top for a short break. The wind buffeted them from all sides. You’d think there’d be a bit of shelter from the massive shadowy stands. But no. The wind weaseled through the gaps, concentrating itself like water from a pipe.
She swung over the other side. Lowrie’s legs were next to useless now, so his entire bulk swung from the knuckles. The joints groaned and threatened to pop.
After an eternity of struggle, she collapsed to the ground. Puddle water soaked through the seat of Lowrie’s trousers. Meg hadn’t the energy to care.
“I don’t know how we’re getting out,” she gasped, “but it won’t be over that fence. Another climb like that would finish off both of us.”
She slipped out of the old man’s head, returning control of the body to its owner. Lowrie instantly felt the full impact of his swollen heart hammering in his chest.
“This is madness,” he gasped. “Stupid.”
For once Meg was glad to be a spirit. At least she’d already been through the whole death thing. “That’s what I said.”
Lowrie lay against the fence for several moments, the shuddering in his chest gradually subsiding to a flat throb.
“Okay,” he breathed. “I’m better now. Let’s go on.”
“Are you sure?”
The old man pulled himself to his feet. “Well, there’s no point giving up now, is there? We’ve already done the hard bit.”
“We? You just sat there and watched. I was the one dragging your wasted old body over the fence.”
“That’s what you’re here for, isn’t it?”
“Suppose.”
“Good. So could we please stop arguing and get on with it, before I actually do have a heart attack?”
CROKE PARK WAS WELL ILLUMINATED EVEN AT THIS TIME of night. Orange lamps buzzed high overhead, throwing ominous shadows across the hulking stands. The grounds were littered with bottles and cans; the wind had swept them into corners like garbage drifts. Obviously, the grounds crew hadn’t yet done the cleanup after a big game.
Lowrie limped onto the field itself. Night lights cast a pale wash over the grass, painting it a ghostly white. The old man couldn’t stop himself grinning. He was here. Actually here, after all these years. He strode out to the center circle, arms outstretched, basking in the applause of his absent classmates. Now, you mockers. Who hasn’t the guts? Who’s a big farmer chicken?
“It’s me!” he shouted, his voice echoing under the Hogan stand. “It’s Lowrie McCall sneaking in at the dead of night!”
Meg giggled, she could see the happiness emanating from the old man like little orange fireworks.
“I’m here to put one over the bar in Croke Park!”
“Are you, now?” said a voice.
The partners turned to look. A security guard was pitching them a very intolerant look, his radio slung low on his hip like a six-shooter.
“And what I want to know,” he continued laconically, “is how the pair of ye intend to put one over the bar, when you haven’t a soccer ball between you?”
Lowrie swallowed. Meg blinked. Two thorny ones there. One: how indeed were they going to play soccer without a ball? And two: what exactly did the security guard mean by the pair of ye?
The guard’s fingers flexed, gunslinger style, over his holstered walkie-talkie.
“Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t—”
Lowrie interrupted his speech. “Don’t I know you?”
It was niggling at Meg too. Something familiar. The security guard shrugged. “Don’t think so. Anyway, don’t be changing the subject. Give me one good—”
“You don’t have a brother, by any chance?”
“Dessie?”
“Same business?”
“Security consultant like myself. Guards all the bigwigs over at the television station, if you don’t mind.”
“With a degree in medieval poetry?”
“Dirty limericks is more like it. Do you know him?”
Lowrie nodded. “Sort of. He opened the gate for me today.”
“Small world,” the guard extended a hand. “I’m Murt. Any friend of Dessie’s and so on . . .”
Lowrie shook the hand hesitantly, on the lookout for a sly handcuffing. Formalities over, Murt was all business again.
“Anyway, back to the matter at hand. Ahem, give me one—” The guard cut himself off this time, realization chasing itself across his face like a galloping virus. “Hey. Lowrie McCall! You’re him, aren’t you?”
“Him who?”
“Off the television. Kissing Cicely Ward. You nervy old monkey.”
“Sorry, wrong man.”
“Cut it out, of course it was. I’d recognize that wrinkly old mug anywhere. Sure, you’ve been plastered all over the evening news, with your olé and your hopping around like Errol Flynn.”
Lowrie couldn’t help a little smug grin. “Okay, it was me.”
“What are you? An escaped lunatic, gallivanting around kissing celebrities?” Murt’s eyes widened. “Here, you’re not staking out another victim at this very minute, are you?”
“No, it’s nothing like that!”
“I hope not. It’s one thing getting into these scrapes yourself. It’s quite another dragging the young lady with you.”
“What young lady?” said Lowrie innocently.
“Are you trying to be funny?”
“He can see me,” hissed Meg, grateful that she had decided to walk instead of hovering. Who said that sulking never did anyone any good?
“Of course I can see you. Although, funnily enough, I didn’t notice you on the camera monitor in the kiosk.”
“There’s a camera on the field?”
“Well, of course there is. Who’d be stupid enough to think we’d guard the fence and not the field? And I didn’t notice that girl on the monitor.”
“Well, that’s because I’m a—”
“That’s because she’s always lagging behind,” cut in Lowrie. “You’d think, now, she’d be able to keep up with an old fossil like me, but no.”
Murt backed off a step. “Maybe the pair of you are lunatics. I’m going to call this in.”
“No, Murt!” said Lowrie, trying to remain calm.
“Let me tell you why I’m here. The truth. Everything. All about Sissy Ward. The works. A story like that. The Sunday papers would pay a fortune for it.”
Murt chewed the edge of his mustache, considering the deal. “You reckon? One of those exposés?”
“Exactly.”
“I’ll tell you what I’ll do. Let’s have the story, and then I’ll decide.”
“That’s not fair!” protested Meg. “You’re holding all the cards then.”
“Life’s not fair, kiddo,” grinned Murt.
“Tell me about it,” muttered the suddenly visible spirit.
“Okay. It’s a deal,” interrupted Lowrie, before Meg antagonized a possible ally.
“Great,” beamed Murt. “Go ahead. The whole truth and nothing but the truth. My line of work has trained me to spot fairy tales a mile off.”
“The whole truth,” Lowrie whistled.
So, as promised, he told the night watchman exactly what was going on. The truth. Well, a loose interpretation of the truth. Okay, a pack of barefaced, baldheaded lies. Lies, he reasoned that would not get them thrown into an insane asylum.
“It all began . . . ah . . . last Friday week.”
“Really,” commented Meg. “This should be interesting.”
“When . . . ah . . . Meg’s grandfather was lying on his deathbed.”
Meg sobbed dramatically. “Poor old Gramps.”
“There we were, all gathered around, waiting for the poor man’s ticker to give out.” When you’re telling a lie, always fire in as much of the truth as possible. Lowrie sneaked a peek at Murt to see if his fairy-tale detector was pickin
g up anything. The night watchman seemed suitably engrossed in the fabrication.
“Now, Grandad was a nice old gent, but sort of useless. His life had flown by and he’d just watched it go. He felt, lying there, that he wasn’t much of a role model for his young granddaughter. So he dragged a promise out of me.”
“What sort of promise?” asked Meg, intrigued in spite of herself. “I mean, yes, he dragged a promise out of old Lowrie here, who used to be . . .”
Lowrie winced. Meg’s fibs probably wouldn’t be as tame as his own.
“Who used to be in his commando unit during the war.”
Murt raised an eyebrow. “That explains how an old fossil like him could get over the perimeter fence.” The eyebrow settled back into its natural groove. “So what was this promise?”
Lowrie scratched the spot on his chin where his stubble used to be. “The promise . . . yes . . . it was that I, his best friend—”
“And commanding officer in the Fighting Terriers,” interjected the spook, thoroughly enjoying herself at this stage.
“Yes,” said Lowrie through gritted teeth. “And commanding officer in the Fighting . . .”
“Terriers.”
“Terriers. Thank you, Meg. I promised that I would do all the things that he’d regretted not doing.”
Murt whistled. “And one of those things was kissing Cicely Ward.”
“Exactly.”
“And now you want to have a kick about in Croke Park?”
“If possible.”
Murt chewed the tip of his mustache. This was a tricky one. Technically it was an open-and-shut case. Breaking and entering. No question as to his duty. Get on to the blower to the police and let them handle it. But . . .
“Where’s your ball, then?”
Meg and Lowrie grinned sheepishly. “Forgot it.”
“Commandos, are you?” snorted Murt. “God Almighty, I must be going off my rocker. Hang on there one minute.” Murt turned and jogged across to the security kiosk, flashlight and radio slapping against his leg.
Meg released a giggle that had been bubbling behind her lips for several moments. “I can’t believe he bought it!”
“No thanks to you. The Fighting Terriers!”
“I just thought I’d liven things up a bit.”
“Thanks very much.”