Free Shift by Chris Dolley

is supposed to be haunted. I've been monitoring some of the rooms to see if there's a higher dimensional explanation."

    He recognised the look. It may have been fleeting, but it was there. Who can trust a witness who sees ghosts for a living?

    "And before you ask, I wasn't monitoring that room. You'll find my equipment in the room next door."

    "Convenient. Did you recognise the victim?"

    "No."

    "You've never seen him before?"

    "Never. Look, have you seen Louise Callander yet? Is she all right?"

    "She is now. After two of my officers spent ten minutes reassuring her that Pendennis was still locked up."

    "He is?"

    Nick couldn't believe it. How . . .

    And then another thought. Would Upper Heywood lie to protect their reputation? Stall the police until they'd got their stories straight? Or had someone sneaked Peter back in?

    "Are you sure?" he asked. "Has anyone actually seen him?"

    "We don't need to. Peter Pendennis is not part of this investigation."

    "But it's his MO. The nose, everything."

    Marsh shook his head. "The vic's too clean. Pendennis leaves his saliva over every body part. He licks them. This one's clean."

    Nick swallowed. That was information he'd have been happier not knowing.

    "And the body's intact," Marsh continued. "Peter likes to cut his up."

    "He was interrupted."

    The detective shook his head again. "That never bothered him before. That's how we caught him. We found him sitting on a basement floor with a severed head in his hands." He looked into the distance and clenched his fists. "He had its nose in his mouth, can you believe that? And he just looked at us. Didn't try to run or anything. Just looked up as though what was happening was the most normal thing in the world. And all the time his cheeks were going in and out as he sucked on that wretched girl's nose."

    "Sucked?"

    None of the holocasts had mentioned that. A stray synapse fired somewhere in Nick's brain. A connection. Something he'd read a long time ago. Rituals—Egyptian? Polynesian?—something to do with sucking the spirits of the dead out through their noses.

    "And killers don't change their MO," said Marsh.

    "Killers with MPD might. He's got twelve personalities so why not have twelve different MOs."

    "You seem to know a lot about Peter Pendennis."

    Back came the appraising stare.

    "I was at Upper Heywood this afternoon. I saw him."

    Marsh narrowed his eyes. "Do you often visit Mr. Pendennis?"

    "No." Where was this going?

    "My officers said you had a camera with you when you found the body. Were you taking pictures?"

    "No! I was using it to see by. It's got night vision capabilities."

    "Why not switch on a light?"

    "I didn't want to risk losing the manifestation."

    "You didn't want to risk losing the manifestation."

    Marsh sounded like a cross-examining barrister echoing Nick's testimony to an incredulous jury. Nick squirmed. Okay, so all the other HDT researchers were out there doing sensible things with their imagers like helping develop stronger, lighter, cheaper alloys. And, yes, he was having fun, pointing his imagers at anything and everything he could think of. But that's what real scientists were supposed to do—to shine light where no one had ever thought to look before, to push, probe and question.

    There was a knock at the door. A young man leaned into the room. "Sorry to disturb you, sir, but we've got an ID on the vic."

    "Sergeant Kelly enters the room," said Marsh for the benefit of the recording. "Close the door, Mike. What have you got?"

    The sergeant closed the door and read from a note pad. "Name's Vince Culley, twenty-nine, local man with two previous convictions for burglary. Petty, opportunist stuff. Probably after the cameras downstairs. They're easy to spot from outside."

    A burglar? Nick hadn't considered his imagers a target. Though, thinking about it, he should have.

    "So, if the cameras are downstairs," asked Marsh, "why was his body found up here?"

    "The window was open