The Ghost

by The Ghost (epub)

  Cook skulked into the kitchen and checked his phone. There was a missed call from Gina, followed up with a text message.

  Police were here! They want to talk to you about something. I had to give them the address. Hope there’s nothing wrong! x

  Cook pocketed the phone and carried his mug of tea into the sitting-room, where Ramshaw – lanky, smooth-bald – and Whitcombe – shorter, squinty – sat side by side, on the sofa. As he sunk carefully into a facing armchair and clanked the drink down a little too hard on the glass coffee table, Cook rewound his memory through vaguely illicit recent events – cut corners, wily misdemeanours, downloaded BitTorrent files. Perhaps it was something to do with the playground fight? Maybe the Mountford/Brereton thing? Since Mountford’s panicked call on his leaving day, Cook had deleted the contact, erased past messages, avoided PastLives.com and generally gone entirely dark on his… friend? Old schoolmate? Shoplifter comrade? Surely this couldn’t be the re-opening of a cold-case – a crackdown on unresolved petty youth crime from the ’70s.

  Whitcombe flipped open a notebook. Ramshaw did the talking.

  “Mr Cook, are you familiar with a young woman by the name of Eleanor Finch?”

  “I’ve seen the news, yes. Has she been found yet?”

  Cook thought he saw a sidelong glance pass between the two officers. Whitcombe, finally, found his voice. “No. Are you acquainted? Do you know each other?”

  “I recognise the name.”

  “Dorian…”

  Ramshaw resumed control. The switch to first-name terms was clearly intended to unsettle.

  “Have you ever met Ms Finch?”

  “No. Of course not. Why would you think that?”

  The tea was too hot to drink but Cook took a nervous slurp, anyway.

  “Our enquiry indicates that the two of you may have known each other.”

  Ramshaw let this hang. Cook stared into his tea for a few silent seconds, and when he looked up he saw that both Ramshaw and Whitcombe had their heads tilted to the left, like curious dogs.

  “She used to write to me,” said Cook. “But that was a very long time ago.”

  “How long?”

  “Back when I was on my first full-time job. I’m a journalist. She… had some kind of crush on me.”

  Whitcombe nodded. This wasn’t news to him, but he noted something in his book. Ramshaw stayed silent, giving his partner the opportunity to follow up.

  “How old were you at the time?”

  “Early twenties.”

  “That would make her fourteen or fifteen.”

  “She wrote to me, but I never wrote back. I never encouraged anything.”

  Ramshaw stepped in. “What was in the letters?”

  (A slight smirk from Whitcombe on this.)

  Cook’s mouth was uncomfortably dry. He took another sip of tea. “Just teenage stuff. It was a bit embarrassing, really. The envelopes were always covered in hearts and things – and the other staff always managed to get to them first.”

  “How often did you receive them?”

  “About once a week. They stopped when I left the magazine and started on a weekly paper.”

  “And you’ve had nothing since?”

  “No.”

  “Did you know her by any other name?”

  “No. She always signed them as ‘Eleanor’. Why?”

  “We don’t believe that was her real name at the time – although she did change it officially later.”

  Cook sensed the officers were trying to establish whether or not this was a surprise to him. It was.

  “I’m not sure how I can help. Have you had any luck in trying to find her?”

  Ramshaw smiled. “We try not to work with luck. It’s a complex enquiry.”

  Whitcombe now, shifting up a gear. “Mr Cook, we have discovered a number of letters at Ms Finch’s flat – intended for you, but apparently unsent.”

  “As I said, I haven’t heard from her since I changed my job. It must be twenty years ago.”

  “The letters we found are fairly recent.”

  “Obviously,” said Ramshaw, leaning forward, “we’re keen to understand if there’s any connection to her disappearance. I have to question why a woman in her late thirties felt the urge to revisit what was – as you say – a teenage crush.”

  “Wasn’t she separated?” Cook on the attack a little, now.

  “She was, indeed.”

  “That must have been stressful – I saw the press conference with her ex-husband. Maybe she was taking comfort in something from simpler times.”

  Ramshaw raised his eyebrows, nodded. “It’s an interesting theory.”

  Whitcombe, scribbling.

  “And the letters are clearly marked for me?”

  “Yes. Your name is on all the envelopes. No address.”

  “What did they say?”

  Whitcombe looked up. “I’m afraid we can’t disclose any detail.”

  Ramshaw sensed progress and took a softer line. “There’s actually very little. Drawings, abstract things. The writing seems to be mainly concerned with why you haven’t replied to earlier letters. Are you sure you’ve received nothing since the time you changed your job?”

  “Absolutely. Nothing.”

  “Dorian…” Ramshaw leaned back, scrutinising. The gaze was keen and challenging and Cook had to fight the urge to break eye contact. “I’m sure you can appreciate the seriousness of this case. If you have any information at all, if you feel you know anything about what might have happened to Eleanor, then you must come forward. I want to make it clear that we’re not accusing you of anything, but if you do fail to disclose information that could serve the enquiry, then that may well be held against you later.”

  Cook bristled. This sounded suspiciously like a prelude to arrest. “As I said, I recognised the name from the news and, obviously, I was shocked. But it was all such a long time ago. I’ve never written back, never been in two-way contact, never encouraged anything. I hope that nothing has happened to her, but I honestly can’t see how I can help you.”

  Later, when the police had left him to tea and toast and 1950s courtroom drama, Cook called Gina and calmed her with a soft-focus explanation of why they had connected him to the missing woman. He heard her sigh down the phone-line – a breeze of enervation.

  “All this drama, Dorian.”

  He spoke to Alfie, mostly about football stickers and zombies. (“They can make you one of them but what happens when all the humans run out and there are only zombies. Will they have to eat each other?”)

  (Cook had to confess his ignorance on this.)

  He wished his son goodnight, told him that he loved him (receiving a mumbled ‘uhuh’ in return), hung up the phone and pulled a small, lockable leather briefcase from one of the still-unpacked removal boxes. Inside, was a stack of letters from Eleanor Finch, retrieved from a safe in his home office. They were packed into clear plastic wallets bearing month/year stickers. The letters had started to arrive at the Widescreen office around two years ago. Their frequency was inconsistent, but rarely dropped below two or three a month. Cook had been tempted to reply a few times, but had managed to keep to his (wise? cowardly?) policy of non-engagement. He sifted through the oldest, sliding the pastel-coloured sheets out through cleanly slitted openings. Eleanor’s initial awkwardness at rekindling the contact steadily progressed to tender advances and heartbreaking one-way reminiscence. After a few months, she seemed to accept the silence, and the tone became more diary-like – pining for the happier days of her marriage, deep thoughts on elapsing time, occasional flares of unrequited sexuality. And then, after a year of silence, the letters came again, telling of her ‘new man’, thoughts on restart and redemption, renewed affection for her children and soon-to-be ex-husband.

  I can be sexual again, Dorian. It’s a relief and a thrill. He’s more dominant than I’m used to. I didn’t think I would enjoy that but I do. I have my own place now, but I stay with him sometimes. He has a nic
e big house on the end of a street, high on a hill so you can see all around. He kept it when his wife died. It reminds me of the house I had when I was a child. It makes me feel safe. It’s actually helped my relationship with Gareth – although I haven’t told him about my man.

  The most recent letters were more confused. She seemed cowed and uncertain.

  He’s so jealous. Doesn’t like it when I go out, always wants to know where I’m going and who I’m with. I’m worried that I might have made a bad decision, but he says he loves me and wants to protect me. He almost caught me writing this letter but I managed to keep it out of sight. In a way, I don’t mind him being jealous. It’s something I never had with Gareth. He didn’t care who I was with towards the end.

  Eleanor’s final letter was sent a few days before she was reported missing. Cook unfolded the single sheet of lilac paper and re-read it, for the third time that week.

  I’m looking out of the window at the primary school – Vaughan Green. The children are playing happily. I miss Amy and Joe so much. I have to send these letters in secret now. Please take care of yourself. I hope you’re there.

  Cook folded the letter and slotted it back into its envelope. He shuddered – and remembered Esther’s saying in response, back at their old, cold house.

  “Someone just walked over my grave.”

  When he was seven years old, he had asked her what she meant by this. (“It’s just what they say, Dor – when someone steps on the bit of ground where you’re going to be buried.”)

  Mountford was right. It was far from nothing.

  Cook had identified two primary schools called Vaughan Green. He had compared their positions with online street-map software, and only one – around thirty miles away – appeared to be on high ground near the end of a street, facing a large detached house.

  Here sat Dorian Cook – jobless, loveless, a force without form, always passing through, never quite arriving. He was a lonely soul who had hovered too long in limbo. But now, gripped with a fresh panic for life, he knew that his time had come around at last.

  30. Who Goes There?

  June, 1976

  Summer swarmed in – a choking, enshrouding heat which baked itself into the Bethesda School classrooms, melting Plasticine, sealing the over-painted ventilation grids, throttling the assembly hall in a miasma of pre-pubescent musk. The pupils staggered from class to class, flushed and drowsy. Cook and Michael Howell started a betting challenge – predicting the number of fainters at morning hymns. (The record was four – a mass topple during a feeble rendering of ‘All Things Bright And Beautiful’.) At home, not even Cook’s bedroom could retain its mystical chill. Esther replaced the heavy-duty sheets with something lacy and flimsy and suspiciously net-curtainish, but Cook still thrashed and floundered in delirious half-sleep, repeatedly waking to gulp from a bedside mug of tepid water.

  His bike had been re-gifted for the half-term break, but Cook could barely pedal past the oil-works without slowing and panting. Instead, he lazed around the back yard, in Y-fronts and vest, playing mini-cricket with Uncle Russell and zapping ants with a magnifying glass.

  A pink-and-white Mr Whippy ice-cream van took residence at the street corner near the bridge, in sight of the old butcher’s shop. As Cook queued, he found it impossible to ignore the building’s ominous allure, and on the Sunday before school restarted, he wheeled the Chopper out of the yard and convinced David Brereton to join him for an ‘investigation’.

  At the bottom of the entry, the boys propped their bikes along the shadowy wall of the Cash & Carry, and sneaked in through the gate-gap. Cook was surprised to see the wooden panel still in place – hinge fractured, flapped over to the side, more or less as he had left it. Brereton lingered outside as Cook stooped his way into the back-room.

  “What’s it like?” called Brereton.

  Cook assumed this to be some kind of safety check. “Nothing here. It’s alright.”

  Brereton barged his way in. “Ah! It stinks. Smells like toilet!”

  “Ssh! Look over here. Unless you’re too scared!”

  “Fuck off!” snarled Brereton, his voice booming through the gloom.

  They scrambled across a bundle of house-bricks which jutted up through the polythene sheeting that, Cook noted, seemed to have shifted and flattened since his last visit. Something else was different – a half-shredded blanket had been knotted onto a rail and draped over the first-floor window. Sunlight flared through the slits, fluttering over the putrid concrete.

  Since he was now not so close to an instant escape, Brereton switched to a whisper. “This is brilliant! You could live here, easy.”

  “Yeah. I think someone does.”

  “Oi!”

  A shout from near the back door. Brereton hustled Cook out of his way and made a dash for the staircase. Cook watched him, smiling. He recognised the voice, but held off on reassurance, keen to see if Brereton was actually planning to dive out of the first-floor window. Brereton scampered halfway up the stairs, stopped and turned, coiled into a crouch and fixed his saucered eyes on the passage from back-door to central chamber.

  “It’s Den,” said Cook, turning, and then, calling – “We’re in here!”

  There was crunching, clattering, muttering.

  Dennis Mountford emerged, with an impish grin. “Did I scare you?”

  Brereton cleared the stairs with one bound, sprinted over to Mountford and leapt onto his back. Cook grappled up onto Brereton, and the three boys veered into a stack of crusty planks, laughing and protesting, eventually collapsing into a corner, consumed by a cartoonish dust-cloud. They sat, huddled close, on the powdered floor, hearts drumming. Brereton summoned the strength to give Mountford a final shove.

  “I nearly shit meself!”

  Mountford sniggered. “I saw the bikes outside.”

  Cook was the first to stand. “C’mon. Let me show you something.”

  Cook led Mountford through to the splintered door and descending staircase. Brereton dawdled and complained, trying to disguise his caution with banter. (“I bet all the tramps have it off in here. You sure this isn’t your house, Dor?”)

  Mountford, the eldest, stepped ahead of Cook and shouldered through the door. A spiral of pitted stone steps led down to a narrow passage half-flooded with spilled plaster. As they reached the bottom, Cook wriggled up-front. Mountford hesitated, Brereton hanging at his shoulder.

  “Can’t see a thing down here!” said Mountford, hushed. “Have you got a torch at your house, Dor?”

  But Cook was away, wading through the rubble, plunging to the end of the passage, submerged by the deep, invincible dark.

  “Hang on…” Brereton lit a match. The scraping tore through the stillness.

  “Where did you get them from?” asked Mountford.

  “He’s always got ‘em,” said Cook, pushing on through the leaping shadows.

  They emerged into what looked like an old storage area. Rotting crates lined the walls, poised below layers of ceramic shelving, tilted by time. The floor was carpeted by a congealed layer of old newspapers, cigarette packets, cushions and cartons. Brereton lit another match and held it up to a row of coloured bottles on one of the shelves. Mountford read from the labels.

  “Tippers Healing Oil… Black Lacquer… Turpentine Substitute… Loxene…”

  Cook stooped and studied a rakish fireplace, hacked together from mismatched stone. The raised hearth was coated in a mound of fresh-looking mulch which had spilled from the firebox. Mountford took a match from Brereton and dangled it over the opening.

  “Is that shit?” said Brereton.

  “Soil,” said Mountford, giving it a kick.

  Still crouching, Cook ran his fingers over a rough metal ring set into a square baseplate, bolted to the floor. It was riddled with rust but, as he clawed at the edges, it lifted away, twisting on its hinge. He gripped it with both hands and pulled upwards, grinding ring against base. The motion disturbed the edges of what looked like a thic
k trapdoor, but it was far too heavy to open.

  “Let’s have a go,” said Mountford. “Give me some light, Dor.”

  Cook took a freshly lit match from Brereton and cast its glow over the ring. Mountford tugged and grunted, but the door’s edges held firm.

  “There’s a load of pipes and bars by them crates,” said Brereton. “Let’s stick ‘em down the ends and get it open.”

  Mountford and Brereton gathered up a few sections of tapered steel tubing. They took a pipe each and stabbed the flattened points into the grooves around the door-edges, prising and rocking until the wood loosened enough for Cook to grip the ring and yank the door open. Brereton wafted a new match over the opening.

  A wooden ladder had been fastened to the trapdoor’s frame, descending to a tiny, dungeon-like cellar.

  “I’m not going down there!” confirmed Brereton.

  But Cook was already backing into the hole, finding footing. He climbed down, slowly and deliberately, testing his weight on each rung. As he stepped off at the bottom, Mountford and Brereton lit new matches and poked them in through the trapdoor opening. Under a low, curved ceiling, the cellar was a ten-foot square cavern of nothing – bare stone floor and walls, no clutter, no shelves, no crates, no light, no anything. But, in the current heat, it felt refreshingly brisk.

  “We could use this!” Cook’s voice was cut short by a squealing creak as the trapdoor swung shut, sealing the frame, casting the cellar into profound blackness.

  Muffled shouts – Brereton laughing and protesting, Mountford stern and urgent.

  Cook’s legs buckled. He kneeled, fingertips groping for the dirty floor. This was a new flavour of void – solid, entombing. Above, Mountford and Brereton scraped their pipes at the trapdoor edges, but Cook was shocked to discover that he felt no fear. He was calm, cool, out of sight, safe from harm, away from the stare of the sun. Down here, there was no closet door for the Sea Devils to fall upon. He waved his hand before his eyes, but only felt a slight air disturbance – he could see nothing.