The Ghoul of Christmas Past

to me. You say you think something might have happened to him rather than he just took off?’
Michael didn’t wish to overstate the case but believed something screwy was going on. ‘There are a number of factors which all seem to correlate. What was your relationship like with him?’
Glaagard flipped a mental coin as he tried to decide whether to tell the old man to stop asking questions but figured it couldn’t do any harm to provide a few details. ‘We didn’t get along. Why do you ask?’
Michael let a breath go as he ran the clues through his head. ‘Why? Because my gut tells me he was taken and the presence of the …’ he almost said ghoul. ‘prowler here earlier leads me to believe the same might have been about to happen to you. Things have been stolen from the museum, the curator was acting cagey when I asked him about it, and I saw Norton myself last week. He was in the bank shouting at the manager because they wouldn’t give him a loan. Do you know why he would need a loan? Surely he was well off if he was a shareholder.’
Richard Glaagard eyed the older man dubiously, wondering why he was involved, but again chose to answer his question. ‘Ronald Norton got his shares because he was the CEO of the theme park. He never received a dividend from them though because he chose to run the place into the ground. He is the chief reason it failed and closed.’
This was news to Michael. ‘He ran the theme park?’
‘Into the ground, yes,’ remarked Glaagard. ‘I wanted him out, but the others – other shareholders that is – were fooled by his plans for development. He is a very charismatic man, I guess that’s why we hired him, but the job proved too much. He was supposed to invest our money in new attractions and in marketing the theme park, but he set out on a ten-year plan he failed to tell us about. It involved taking our money and buying all the properties around the existing theme park’s footprint. He wanted to spend billions making the park into some kind of British Disney World, but there was just no guarantee of success. When I found out, I cut his plans off at the knees. I thought we were going to lose the whole investment – the park was failing because of his lack of management. It turned out, though, that the land is worth a fortune. He did us a big favour, though that was never his intention. It’s about to be sold and will be turned into riverside apartments. The shareholders will get all their money back, even Ronald will get a payout.’
‘Because he is also a shareholder?’ Michael Michaels found the whole premise confusing.
Glaagard nodded. ‘It was part of his package. He got a small number of shares. That’s fairly typical for chief executives as it keeps them incentivised and links their pay directly to performance.’
‘Why was he after a loan?’
Michael got a shrug in response. ‘That I could not hope to guess, Mr Michaels. He lost his job when we closed the theme park, perhaps he has been unable to find new employment and is in need of financial assistance.’
Spotting a possible motivation for events, Michael asked, ‘Did he hold a grudge?’ When Glaagard hitched an eyebrow, Michael clarified, ‘Against you for wanting him out?’
One of the police officers had found something over at the wall. It drew Mr Glaagard’s attention and he set off to see what it was. As he walked away, he said, ‘I can assure you the man I saw today was not Ronald Norton.’
Michael Michaels stayed where he was, unsure what to do next. He was onto something, he felt sure of that, but he couldn’t get anyone to listen. Not even the police.
What the cops found was a handprint in the frost adhered to the top of the wall. The ghoul had vaulted the wall placing his left hand on top as he went over. There was a drop of about eight feet the other side. Enough to make Michael question whether he would have vaulted it himself.
On a different day, when the clouds cleared to let the sun shine through, the frost would have been long gone, but the cool temperatures and low cloud cover meant it had lingered. Together with the footprint, it gave them all an indication for the size of the individual they were dealing with.
Patience whistled a low sound of appreciation. ‘That is one big handprint. I bet a basketball looks like a walnut in a hand that size.’

Shareholders. Saturday, December 24th 1605hrs
Christmas Eve traffic was heavy it seemed which had two effects. The first of which was that it took Mary far longer than expected to get to him, by which time Michael was getting cold and needed the toilet. The second was that Mary was hopping mad.
‘I’ve spent half the day in the car,’ she pointed out. ‘It took me twenty minutes just to get to the bridge.’
Sympathising, Michael said, ‘Oh dear. Yes, it can get a little clogged sometimes.’
Mary wanted to poke him in the hip with a fork. ‘Are you ready to go?’ she enquired, trying to focus on the glass of sherry she poured but didn’t get to taste before she found she needed to go out again to collect her ridiculous husband.
He looked about. ‘Yes, dear. I think so.’ The cops were waiting for a forensics team to arrive. Richard Glaagard had latched onto Michael’s idea that he or his family might be in danger and was making enough noise to cause the police to take the matter seriously. The recent disappearance of Ronald Norton played a big part in that.
Whatever the forensics team might find, it was out of Michael’s hands