In the Company of Ghosts by Stephen A Hunt

overlap.’
    Doyle grunted. ‘And I’ll need you to take your spook nose, stick it in this pile’s antique shitter, and hold it here until I’ve taken as long as I need to get the answers I want. This is a murder investigation. My murder investigation.’
    ‘The next round of visitors—’
    ‘If I find ninjas hiding in one of the urns, you can all draw straws to see who’s going to take a bullet for Werks. Until then, you can do what all good guard dogs do…stay quiet and watch for burglars. If you’re needed to bark, I’ll whistle.’
    The agent appeared as though he was about to remonstrate with Doyle, but Agatha tapped his lapel with her office passport as they reached the entrance to what looked like the library. ‘My apologies, gentlemen. A cultural misunderstanding. We do things a little differently in our country.’
    Agatha just made it through the threshold as Doyle started to close the door on the two spooks’ faces. She glanced around. The library contained shelf upon shelf of leather tomes, bookcases fitted into the wall, brown walls mounted with large electric candles and a collection of porcelain in glass cabinets arrayed in front of a sweep of tall windows. Under the high white ceiling everything inside appeared smaller than it should do by rights, a rich noblewoman’s Wendy House. Gazing sadly on the view outside, herbaceous rose borders and his granite-edged pool with ornate waterspouts spraying in its centre was Curtis Werks, a magazine-sized tablet computer resting in his lap as he leaned back in an armchair. His skin appeared more tanned than his brother’s, a healthy ruddy shine to it. Or perhaps that just comes from being alive? I wonder what you’re thinking, Mister Werks? Not just anguish, but worry too. Real worry, If I’m any judge. Other than that he was a mirror of the dead twin Agatha had seen in the mortuary. The mirror man was wearing the smart-casual uniform of venture capitalists around the world – dirt-yellow chinos and a dark black roll-neck shirt. There was nobody else in the room. No secretaries or bodyguards – either his own or the state’s hastily assigned bullet-catchers. A set of piercing blue eyes swivelled around on the two newcomers as the library door shut. Agatha was struck by the sudden impression that such eyes should have belonged to a ghost, so clear she could almost stare through them and out of the window Werks stood framed against as he stood up. But this is the twin who lived.
    ‘You’re the specialist team from the British government?’ Werks asked in a soft-spoken Pennsylvania baritone. ‘Please, do sit down.’
    Doyle nodded brusquely. ‘Gary Doyle. Agatha Witchley. We’ll stay standing. You might want to sit.’
    ‘All the better to intimidate me, is it? Well then,’ said Werks, ‘Perhaps you can start by telling me what evidence you have that my brother was actually murdered rather than dying in an unfortunate accident?’
    ‘You don’t seem too upset over his death?’ observed Doyle, sidestepping his question.
    ‘I don’t need British civil servants to tell me the manner I should grieve,’ snapped Werks, running a hand through his dark mop of hair. ‘Of course I loved Simon. We were as close as any pair of twins in the world. But our work was important to us, it was everything we built together. I don’t know what will be worse… the news reaching the market that Simon died accidentally as a result of autoerotic asphyxiation, or the news hitting Wall Street that he was murdered in a professional execution. And now you people tell me I’m a target for assassination too. Do you have any idea how that is going to play out? Now, you can have the courtesy to tell me why the hell do you think Simon’s death is murder?’
    ‘I know this is a novel experience for you, but in this deal, I ask the questions,’ said Doyle. ‘You answer them.’
    Werks scowled. Agatha trusted it wasn’t because Groucho Marx was coalescing into