Page 32 of Unalive On Air

“At least we know how the chandelier fell,” Jazz says. She makes a note of it on her pad. “Is your theory suicide?”

“Nooooo,” yell about five ghosts at once. Camille punches the air, then does a little dance.

Davies doesn’t answer Jazz, or if he did, it was drowned out by the protestations of the spirits.

“So, he lay in bed and shot the chandelier wire with this gun thingy, knowing it would fall directly onto him and kill him?” Jazz doesn’t sound so sure. She purses her lips together like she’s stopping herself from saying something, and side-eyes her sergeant.

Davies checks his watch again for the umpteenth time. “Exactly. Poor guy, must have had such a sad and lonely life, no wonder he travelled all the way here, to the suicide hotspot of the south‑west.”

“The fuck, dude? You don’t even know anything about me,” I say.

“Well, is he wrong?” asks Peter.

I don’t have a witty response to that, so I scowl at him. “No.”

Stove practically leans through Jazz as she writes something on her pad. “Had a gun . . . why chandelier when he could shoot himself? . . . time to stash gun under pillow, question mark.”

“Ooh, she knows it’s not suicide,” Pixie says, raising a brow at me.

Jazz could prove to be a useful contact. An ally, potentially. Of course, I’ll need to figure out how to communicate with the living first. Ouija board maybe?

“I’m going to bag up his things. You check over the body for anything else, and we’ll build our case for suicide,” Davies says.

Jazz grimaces. If looks could talk, hers would say, “Do I have to?” Instead, she says, “Yes, Serg.”

“Is that legal?” I ask nobody in particular. “Can they just . . . do that?”

Trystan answers. “No idea, but that’s standard Davies procedure. It’s either suicide or accidental death—usually so long as the hotel isn’t legally responsible—or natural causes.”

“So long as the hotel’s not responsible?” I ask.

“He’s a shareholder,” Peter supplies.

“Isn’t that a conflict of interest?” I say.

He shrugs, then nods. “Practically everybody in this town owns shares in this hotel. They all want it to do well because . . . well, money talks. He has a vested interest in protecting the reputation of the business.”

Interesting. Very interesting.

“Is Helga a shareholder?” There’s a tiny spark of a theory bubbling away. “Or Franny Driscoll?”

It’s Jeanie who answers. “The Paragon is a co-operative, so yes, all the employees are shareholders. It’s actually what Dave and I argued about before I snuffed it.”

I eye Jazz enviously. Man, I wish I were able to take notes right now. “You fought with Sergeant Davies? How long before you . . . died?”

“Well, let me tell you,” Jeanie says with the air of someone who absolutely lives for the gossip. She places her hand on my shoulder and squeezes it. “When I took over the hotel back in nineteen ninety, it was a private limited company, and only a few people had a stake in the profits. But they were . . . well, let’s just say they weren’t the type of people I wanted to reward for the hotel’s success. They were outsiders, and I’d always thought that a business’s best assets are its people, so after four years, I transformed it into a public limited company so that anyone could buy shares, and as part of the employee benefits package, each member of staff became a shareholder. And it worked. Employees cared more about their jobs, and profits increased. And now you’re thinking, ‘but surely more profit is a good thing,’ and you’d be right. However, some folk, like Dave Davies, felt it cheapened his shares. Like it devalued them. I know, ridiculous, but three days before I died, we had a huge row in the hotel foyer. He told me I’d made a serious mistake with the business, and that I would ‘live to regret it.’” Jeanie does air quotes around the last part of her sentence. “Got that bit wrong, didn’t he?”

Stove watches me carefully. I get the feeling he’s trying to communicate something, but he also could just be stirring the pot for the sake of it.

“Gary Runcorn,” Davies says, interrupting the moment, but not entirely interrupting my thoughts. He’s found my driver’s license and is reading the name on my ID.

It could have been him. He could easily have killed Jeanie. Pushed her off the cliff to teach her a lesson, or get back at her, or whatever. He’s the right age, late fifties, early sixties probably. He might have been responsible for all of them.

Even Peter.

Even me?

“Male, lives in Swindon, born on the thirty-first of October nineteen eighty-six,” Davies continues.