The Bride Wore Black Leather

hunched down in my seat, so as to present a smaller target. The music system was playing a Matt Munro song. I smiled . . . I wanted to close my eyes and sleep, and not have to wake up until the whole mess was over. But I couldn’t do that. Cathy reached a main road and threw the MINI Cooper into the main flow of traffic like a knight entering a joust. I told her about the Sun King, about everything that had happened, and what might still happen if I couldn’t stop it. She didn’t get a lot of the sixties stuff—way before her time. So she concentrated on the bit she did understand.
    “If you’re going to be dealing with a ghost,” she said, hitting her horn imperiously and steering her car like it was an offensive weapon, “you’re going to need help and advice from someone who specialises in the differently departed. Ghosts can be really difficult characters.”
    “You have a specialist in mind?” I said.
    “I always have someone in mind,” Cathy said loftily. “I know everyone, or at the very least, everyone worth knowing. I’ll take you right to the gent in question, but I’ll warn you now, boss; you’re really not going to like him. No-one ever does.
Get out of the bloody way!
I hate people who change lanes without signalling. Where was I? Oh yes. You probably know the guy, and not in a good way. But he knows more about talking to ghosts than anyone should who hasn’t actually been nailed into a box and waved good-bye under six feet of wet turf.”
    “I’m really not going to like this person, am I?” I said.
    “Boss, you’re going to hate him on sight. Everyone does.”
    •  •  •
    Cathy finally pulled up outside a really sleazy nude dancing club, specialising in ghost girls. SPIRITED DANCING , it said on the sign. It looked like the kind of place where you could contract a whole new kind of STD, have your wallet lifted, and do a dozen things that were morally bad for you, all before you sat down. Cathy parked her MINI half on the pavement, got out, and glared around her at anyone who even looked like they might object. I clambered carefully out and managed to whip the tail of my trench coat out of the way before the door slammed itself shut. Cathy slapped a display sign on the windscreen, reading EXORCIST ON CALL! THIS CAR IS PROTECTED BY SOMETHING YOU WON’T EVEN SEE COMING!
    “Is it really?” I said.
    “Who can say?” said Cathy, beaming brightly. “Would you risk it?”
    I gave my full attention to the front of the club, which was basically an open door surrounded by photos of dancing girls wearing nothing but smiles. Not the girls we’d be seeing inside, of course. Ghosts don’t photograph well; normally, all you get is a shimmering blob of ectoplasm. The barker at the door was a large, muscular type in a tweed suit who gave me his best professional smile.
    “Come on in, sir! They’re dead, and they dance! They’re all naked and not in the least departed! Oh, hello Cathy. How’s it going?”
    “Not too bad, Tim,” said Cathy. “Do you know my boss, John Taylor?”
    “No, and I don’t want to,” the barker said firmly. “You go in. I’ll go and hide in the toilets till the trouble’s over. Give me a call when it’s safe to come out again.”
    “It would appear my reputation proceeds me,” I said, as Cathy led the way in.
    “Isn’t that what a reputation’s for?” said Cathy.
    We barged straight past the ticket-seller in her little glass cage. She took one look at me and ducked completely out of sight. Inside, the club was dark and dingy, with a side order of openly disgusting. It smelled like something really bad had happened in the toilets. Very recently. The floor was sticky under my feet, and I didn’t want to think with what. There was a general air of cheap and nasty, including some of the girls and most of the customers. Sawdust had been scattered thickly on the floor around the edges of the raised circular stage, to soak up the usual spilled fluids.
    Ghost girls danced on the spotlit stage, sliding up and down steel poles in defiance of gravity, leaping and soaring through the smoke-filled air, often passing in and out of each other’s translucent figures. Their faces pretended delight, but their eyes were empty. Faded rainbows moved slowly across their semi-transparent forms, like the colours you see sliding across the surface of a soap bubble. The girls moved sexily, even gracefully, but with little emotion. They were only the memories