Page 50 of Inbetweeners
“You’re looking at me as if you want to kill me. Go ahead. I’ll come back to life.”
“Why are you being like this?”
“Like what?”
Harry flung himself into the back of the car. “I wish I could have taken notes. What if I can’t remember everything?”
“Tell us before you forget,” Emmett said.
“There’s a dead guy in there. The version of him that’s like me is sitting in the corner of the room crying while the police are taking pictures and stuff. His name’s Albert Jenkins. He’s twenty-two or was it twenty-four? Hmm. Damn.”
Phoenix groaned. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Okay. Well, he was stabbed in the back. I told himjoin the club.He didn’t think it was funny. Well, it isn’t, is it? But… Anyway, there’s a funeral director coming to take him to their place because the local mortuary has got some sort of contamination issue for the next several hours. I can’t remember what they said it was. Something bad. Not chemical weapon bad, or nerve agent bad, but…”
“For fuck’s sake,” Phoenix barked. “Which funeral director?”
“Erm… Um… Shit. Something and sons.”
Phoenix let out a huff of disbelief. “The one thing that’s important and you can’t remember?”
Emmett googled local funeral directors. “Walters and Sons?”
Harry nodded. “Yes, that’s it.”
“They’re on the high street.” Emmett put the address into the satnav.
“Albert won’t leave his body. I tried to get him to come with me, but he wouldn’t. I told him to get back inside himself, but he wouldn’t do that either.”
“Does he know who killed him?”
“A blonde woman. She knocked on his door and said she was from the council. Obviously, she wasn’t.”
They set off.
“What are we going to say at the funeral home?” Phoenix asked.
“We can pretend we have a relative who’s going to die soon. We’re getting things in place.”
Phoenix nodded. “Albert could have decided to move on in the meantime.”
“He could, but we need to be sure he’s gone. Plus, the couple behind these stabbings may still think they can get their hands on his ghost.”
“Once I was out of my body, I had to stay near it for twenty-four hours,” Harry said. “After that, I managed to leave and I wandered around outside for a while. But I went back. I wanted to see if they could find out who’d killed me and maybe if…”
“If what?” Emmett asked.
“If anyone would come to see me.”
Emmett felt a pang of grief grip his heart.Poor Harry.
“Maybe there’s a short window of opportunity,” Phoenix said. “Whoever wants these…inbetweeners—”
“That’s a cool name,” Harry said. “Stuck in between this world and the next place. I like it.”
Phoenix looked at Emmett.
Emmett glanced across at him. “Are you really that needy?”
