“Eh?” I said.

“I mean, it didn’t cross your mind to speak to someone really special instead, such as …”

“Aaaagh!” I went, clapping my hands to my face.

“Such as P.P. Penrose,” said Barry. “That’s who I would have spoken to.”

“Aaaagh!” I went once more and I punched myself right in the face.

“Now that must have really hurt,” said Barry, as I struggled to pick myself up from the floor.

“You fell down in the vomit,” Barry continued and he laughed. Or tried to. Then he vomited some more.

“My God,” I said. I was up on my knees and rocking somewhat on them. “I could have spoken to Mr Penrose, but I chose to speak to my wretched father. What was I thinking of?”

“Perhaps you miss your dad,” was Barry’s suggestion.

“No, I fugging don’t.”

Barry shook his head painfully. “But this is really true?” he said. “That’s what they’re doing up there? Talking to the dead? I thought it was something to do with extraterrestrial life or some such toot. But it’s really the dead? This is incredible. This is unlike anything. This is really truly far-out, man. I mean, the dead. At the end of a phone line, the dead.”

“It’s the dead,” I said. “It’s really the dead.”

“Then I want a go. Lend me your white coat and your light bulb.”

“Stuff that,” I said. “You’re on duty. You do it in your own time.”

“What? And have you switch me off?”

I looked at the bulb and Barry looked at the bulb and then on some metaphysical level certain thoughts were exchanged.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” asked Barry.

“If it’s what I’m thinking, then yes,” I said.

“I’m thinking chats with the dead,” said Barry. “Lots of chats with the dead and all a lot longer than three measly minutes.”

“Yes,” I said, nodding my head. “I’m up for that. But how and when?”

“Both easy,” said Barry. “After eleven, when they all go home.”

“Hold on,” I said. “They all go home after eleven? Does that mean that the bulb never flashes after eleven?”

“Not as far as I know,” said Barry. “I usually get my head down for some sleep after eleven. I have to be up bright and early in the morning. I have another job as a milkman. I’m saving up to be a millionaire.”

I made a fist, but I didn’t use it. “So Developmental Services closes at eleven?”

“It has as long as I’ve been working here. The bulb never flashes after eleven. In fact, there’s hardly anyone left in the building. That’s how I traced where the wire went. There’s only the night watchman and he just sits at the front desk reading nudie books.”

“All right,” I said. “After eleven it is.”

And so we waited until after eleven. We listened at the bulb-booth door as the technicians chatted and smoked before clocking off for the night. And then when all was still and quiet we left the bulb booth and took the lift to the seventeenth floor.

“It will all be locked up, won’t it?” I asked as we sidled up the corridor towards room 23.

Barry shrugged as he sidled. “Dunno,” he said. “I traced the wire up to this floor, but I never tried any of the doors. I was going to, but then” – he shrugged again – “I couldn’t be arsed. I was just so sure that it would be a terrible disappointment, so I didn’t bother.”

“Fair enough,” I said, although I wasn’t altogether convinced. We had reached the door to room 23, so I put my ear against it.

“Hear anything?” Barry asked.

I withdrew my ear and shook my head. And then I tried the handle. And the door was locked.

“Let’s kick it open,” said Barry. “Stuff it, who cares?”

“I do,” I said. “If we can get away with this without anyone knowing, we can do it every night.”

“Good point. Which leaves us stuffed. Unless you happen to know how to pick locks.”

I grinned at Barry. “Of course I do,” I said. “My friend Dave, who is a criminal by profession, taught me. All I need is a couple of paperclips.”

“No problem,” said Barry, producing them out of thin air.

“How did you do that?” I asked.

“My friend the Great Gandini taught me. He’s a magician by profession. Used to do an act in Count Otto’s dad’s circus.”

“Yeah, right,” I said.

“Well, it’s as believable as your mate Dave teaching you how to pick locks.”

I took the paperclips and picked the lock.

“Coincidence is a wonderful thing,” said Barry. “Let’s go and talk to the dead.”

The lights were still on in room 23. All the lights. All the bulbs, flashing and flickering, going on and off.

“It’s a Mother Board,” said Barry, staring up in awe.

“What is a Mother Board?” I asked him.

“It’s the central framework of a computer.”

“Oh,” I said. “Well, that would explain it. It’s a very big computer. Come on, I’ll take you to the phone box.”

And I took Barry to the phone box.

“Right,” said Barry, rubbing his hands together. “So what do I have to dial?”

“You dial in the full name of the deceased person and the date of their death. Then multiply the figure that comes up on the screen by the age of the person when they died and take away the year they were born in and, wallah, you have your dialling code.”

“And it’s as simple as that?”

“I suppose the big computer does all the calculations and works out the frequencies and stuff.”

“Fair enough.” Barry opened the phone-box door. “Let’s go and speak to Mr Penrose.”

“Now, hold on,” I said. “If anyone’s going to speak to him, I think that someone should be me.”

“Why?” Barry asked. “It was my idea. You wanted to speak to your dad. I suggested Mr Penrose.”

“It should be me,” I said.

“No, it shouldn’t,” said Barry.

“Should,” I said.

“Shouldn’t.”

And so I hit Barry right in the face.

“That is so unfair,” said Barry, dabbing at his bloody nostrils. “You wouldn’t be up here if it wasn’t for me.”

“That is so a lie,” I told him. “But stuff it, I don’t care, you go first, if you want.”

“Thanks,” said Barry and he went into the phone box, took up the receiver and dialled the name and the numbers. Then he waited for a bit and then he slammed down the receiver and came out and scowled at me.

“It didn’t work,” he said. “It did nothing. This is all a wind-up, isn’t it?”

“No, it’s not,” I said. “I spoke to my dead dad.”

“Are you sure they weren’t just pulling some trick on you up here?”

“No, I thought of that. It worked. It was real.”

“Well, it doesn’t work. I dialled him up. It didn’t work.”

“It must work. What did you dial?”

“I dialled up P.P. Penrose and the date he died and all that other stuff.”

“Yeah, well, that’s because you’re a twonk. His real name wasn’t P.P. Penrose. It was Charles Penrose. My daddy knew him. I was at his wake, you know.”

“You never were?”

“I was, and at his funeral.”

“And were you at the exhumation, when they found him all mashed up in the coffin because he’d been buried alive?”

A terrible shiver went down my spine. “No,” I said. “I wasn’t at that. Terrible, that was. Horrible.”

“Yeah,” said Barry. “So go on, then, if his name was Charles. Dial him up.”

My hand was on the door, but suddenly I felt rather sick. I was the one who’d done that to Mr Penrose. Brought him back to life in his coffin with voodoo. Put him through hideous torment until death had taken him again. I wasn’t so sure that I really wanted to speak to him. What if he knew it was me? There was no telling what the dead might know about the living. What they could see. Where, exactly, they were. He might know I’d done it. He wouldn’t be too pleased to speak to me.

“You do it,” I said. “You dial him up again.”

“Why not you?”

“Do you want to speak to him or not?”

“I do,” said Barry and he waited outside, while I did the dialling this time. And it took me a couple of goes to get it right. Because the real date of Mr Penrose’s real departure was the day that he died, for the second time, in his coffin.