A Private Haunting

by Tom McCulloch

  Back in the kitchen he made a coffee and studied the mess on the table. A wine glass had Mary’s lipstick on the rim. He touched the pinky-red smear, rubbing it between his fingers.

  The night before she’d come in by the front door. He was impressed. Straight through the seethe of journalists. No one had stood by Fletcher like that. The story wasn’t about Lacey anymore. It was about Mortensen, and this woman very publicly supporting him.

  Like Lacey, Fletcher’s sister Iris had quickly disappeared behind all that they said he had done. Both girls would be forever defined by that vanishing, lost in the shadows of the men who had taken them. Killed them, they said. A shallow grave in the woods, maybe, weighed down with stones at the bottom of the murky river. Even if they magically re-appeared they would remain lost behind those men, who must have done it. Everyone knew it. Despite the psycho-babbling ambiguity of the shrinks, all the complexity of a situation, sometimes you just know. We need the other to convince ourselves of our normality. No smoke without fire.

  So Fletcher could understand why Mary hit him again and again. It was why he didn’t stop her.

  As Mortensen would tell you, opinions become granite-hard are hard to shift. Fletcher wondered, as Mary slapped and punched him, whether beating him with her doubt was enough for her. Or whether she would tell others about him now. He didn’t want to leave again. That would be the ultimate irony. Two troubled ghost-men. Two men who didn’t want to leave End Point both forced to leave. He didn’t feel sorry for the Norwegian, no chance of that. That meant allowing the return of a self-pity he had cast out a lifetime ago.

  Thirty-nine

  Jonas knew what he was going to do. He had a plan. Big Haakon would be pleased. First rule of bushcraft, always have a plan.

  He considered telling the hairdresser. The words were on the tip of his tongue, almost out...

  The mournful face stopped him. She wouldn’t get it, too caught up in her misery to be interested in what Jonas was telling her. The lurid, tropic-green hair must have been a light-hearted attempt to leaven a depressive nature. It didn’t seem to have worked. But Jonas didn’t know her before the green hair. Perhaps she was completely transformed, if still miserable.

  Also anxious from the moment Jonas walked through the door of the empty salon. She had immediately switched the radio off, as if this situation required her complete attention.

  Jonas couldn’t remember ever seeing anyone in the salon. Was it a front, a hobby, the hairdresser indulged by a rich and smitten lover? Someone of a more suspicious nature would make enquiries but Jonas just asked about the ten-pound wash and wet cut. She considered his request by running her eyes across the several people peering through the salon windows.

  ‘I’m booked solid,’ she said.

  Jonas looked around. ‘But there’s no one here.’

  ‘They’re due.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘They’re due.’

  ‘Can’t you fit me in? Look.’ He put his hands to his head. ‘Not much here anyway. It won’t take long.’

  She bit her lip and glanced at the window. So what’ll it be, green-hair, a tenner’s a tenner but is it worth the opprobrium of serving the local paedophile? Apparently yes, and Jonas so hangover-fragile that this simple little kindness almost set him blubbering like a child.

  To begin with the hairdresser was rough, hurrying, scrubbing at his head like she was cleaning a pot. Maybe she noticed the grimace in his face, or the screw of his eyes where the shampoo was leaching in. Whatever it was she began to slow, the fingers relaxing, now gently pressing, massaging his scalp, making little yellow lights dance behind his stinging eyes.

  Ah Jonas, he needed those gentle fingers. The hairdresser must be an understanding soul.

  Maybe he’d tell her about the decisions he’d made the night before after all. Not for reassurance, just how they had suddenly clicked, the certainty still strong when he woke in the morning and found himself lying naked on his bedroom floor in the recovery position. Beside him was a half-eaten slice of toast and peanut butter. But the toast didn’t matter, what did was his sense of enormous well-being, the euphoria of his decisions joined by that of a lingering booze-buzz. Straightaway, Jonas had decided to get a haircut. Why wouldn’t he?

  He gave the hairdresser twenty and you can keep the change. Again, she glanced at the window but the crowd was gone, no need to be cautious. ‘Thanks,’ she said, and looked at him brightly, friendly, the brightness that came from a normal transaction and if there was anything that Jonas would have paid much more than twenty pounds for, it was normality.

  Too much to ask?

  Probably, but a new haircut meant a fresh Jonas, one distanced from what was happening all around him. Normal Jonas. The Viking. The Viking who had decided to have another party.

  Mary had been horrified when he told her. Really? Are you all right, Jonas? Are you sure you’re coping? He was, he was going about his normal life and normality meant doing what was expected of the Viking and that meant a party, everyone loved his parties. He didn’t tell her about the second decision but she’d understand that as well, everyone would understand.

  Jonas paused on the way out of the salon. He’d caught sight of himself in the mirror and it truly was a good haircut, the hairdresser should be congratulated. He also decided to tell her the story about the time Axel got a terrible bowl-cut from Camp Sven and stayed off school for two weeks, can you believe it? As if two weeks was enough to heal that butcher’s job!

  Because normal Jonas was also friendly Jonas, who’d fix a smile and let pass the tired old shouts of the media crowd which came hurrying over when they saw him coming out of the salon. When a photographer took a picture right in his face as he crossed the road to End Point that was fine too. He asked the photographer if he liked his new cut and the photographer could only open his mouth and frown, clearly no connoisseur of a decent haircut.

  As soon as he closed the front door he broke down. Leaned back against the door and let it pour, slipping down to the floor until he was back in the recovery position he’d woken in. He told himself they were friendly people, all of them. They would come to his party and even Fletcher was welcome, even Fletcher, the man of smoke who came and went.

  Jonas felt even better after he had made the phone call. Surprising, how easy it was to arrange.

  He checked the clock. 11 am. Two hours to kill. He walked the rooms, paced the rooms, a restless meandering to a somewhere that turned out to be Old Sam. He hadn’t seen Sam in a while and why not now, why not, surely the old guy would be in The Black Lion.

  They followed him again. Occasional jostles, photographers running ahead to crouch down and point their cameras. Fewer questions about Lacey. More about Mary. How’s the affair. What’s it like to have a woman who fights for you?

  He hesitated outside the door to The Black Lion. A sudden memory about Westerns, Sunday afternoons at Axel’s, John Wayne and Henry Fonda. He felt like Henry Fonda now, wincing outside the saloon before stepping inside, the door swinging behind him in the stillness, gamblers staring and a honky-tonk piano abruptly stopped. Old Sam was there, thank God.

  ‘Pint of Hooper’s please.’

  ‘Pint it is.’

  Clara pulled the pint. Jonas heard the honky tonk start up, the drinkers returning to their conversations. But apart from Sam and Jonas the only other customers were a man in a motorised wheelchair and an unfeasibly fat dog. Even the damn dog looked at him with disdain.

  ‘Sam.’

  ‘Jonas.’ The old man took another long drink of his pint before he turned. The eyes were troubled.

  ‘Been a while.’

  ‘Not really, son.’

  ‘Seems like it.’

  ‘Still a bloody circus out there. Not much wonder people start to lose their bearings.’

  ‘That’s one thing that can be guaranteed.’

  ‘There’s a lot more than that can be guaranteed, Jonas. You need to keep your eyes open.’

>   Jonas nodded to Clara to get Sam another pint. ‘Funny thing. You were in my dream last night. We were sitting in a pub down Bergen harbour. We were fishermen, I think. It was winter.’

  Sam chuckled and turned. The eyes had softened, become indulgent. ‘Was I indeed? Bergen, eh? I never really fancied myself as a fisher. Rather be an engine-room jockey than stink of fish.’

  And he told Sam the rest of a dream which hadn’t happened, the details so easily pouring, how it was cold, must have been twenty below, snow in the streets and no light, 1942 and we were out after curfew, down by the warehouses, waiting for our Resistance contact, holding our breath and nervous, then crunching boots and a match lighting a cigarette and the face of a young German, lingering there, looking around as he smoked then flicking the butt that landed at our feet, hiding in the doorway not ten feet away... Sam gave a little laugh. When Jonas continued Sam put a hand on his. ‘C’mon, you don’t need to.’

  ‘Don’t need to what?’ This was the dance. The dance of Sam and Jonas, with its cues and tells. Jonas needed a way back to Bergen, the Rosenkrantz Tower and the fantasy barmaid at Logens. He didn’t want the old man to acknowledge a fake dream. He wanted him to dance.

  Sam looked at him for a moment then smiled. Patted his hand. ‘Bergen in winter. Helluva cold.’

  ‘You never lived there!’

  ‘I could have.’

  ‘You and the barmaid, a cosy little house in Christinegård.’

  ‘Now you’re talking!’

  ‘A little, white-painted wooden house.’

  ‘Possibly, I would have – ’

  ‘It was a long walk from anywhere. A real pain if you’ve got the shopping. And a kid. Pushing a buggy up there.’

  Sam shifted on his seat. ‘Children? Well it might have been a – ’

  ‘Eva would call me to come and help her. I’d have to traipse down and push the buggy back. Then carry the damn thing up the steps. I’d complain to Anya all the way. I’d say well the next time I think we should just leave her there. And Anya would say no, daddy, that’s not fair but Eva would agree and we’d keep it going, back and forth. Anya loved it. She loved it.’

  He looked at Sam, who nodded vaguely. The troubled look was back. ‘I read the papers, Jonas.’

  ‘Do you now.’ He didn’t mean the harshness. He called to Clara for two whiskies. Doubles.

  ‘Take it easy, son.’

  Jonas clinked his glass against Sam’s. ‘I didn’t fall in love like you. No fireworks, love at first sight. That’s for lucky buggers like you. Eva and I just met in a bar, got talking and that was that.’

  ‘You don’t need to tell me this.’

  He grabbed Sam’s hand. Squeezed and smiled. ‘It’s what people want. Everyone wants to know. It’s like they have a stake in me, and some of them would no doubt like to stick a stake in me!’

  ‘C’mon now, that’s – ’

  ‘Tell me about the barmaid at Logens. I’ve got this idea of her. I want to imagine her there with you.’

  ‘It’s maybe not the best – ’

  ‘Of course it is, c’mon Sam, tell it!’

  So Sam did.

  As Jonas listened and laughed and asked his occasional questions he wondered why Sam did. Maybe in the strangest of moments there’s nothing as reassuring as our own fixations.

  * * *

  The presenter-journalist was celebrity-coiffed and bleach-toothed, exclusively clad in a suit that likely came with etiquette lessons. You can put on a Savile Row suit, old boy, but can you wear one?

  He nodded, sympathetically, when Jonas said he felt bad about Sam. He agreed with a breathy yes when Jonas laid it on thick and said life is a series of stage directions we can’t quite hear. All the while he scribbled in a notebook, leaning against the steering wheel of the big Lexus.

  His eyes lit up when Jonas gave a flavour of what he’d told Sam. About his wife and daughter. Their life in Bergen. This is just what the viewers want, he said, a man telling his story, telling the truth. His demeanour said something different, the wariness in the eyes and the tension in the body giving away his nervousness about being in the presence of a kidnapper.

  A killer.

  ‘Do you tell people about this?’ Jonas asked.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘These secret meetings with your interviewees. People must be impressed.’

  The presenter shifted in his seat. His face brightened. ‘Sometimes I do. People are... interested, yes.’

  ‘So I’ll become a story.’

  He laughed nervously and drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. ‘You already are a story.’

  ‘At your dinner parties, I mean. What’ll you really say about me? The bits that won’t get on TV.’

  The fingers stopped drumming. The presenter stared out of the windscreen, Jonas following his gaze to the car park of Breckon Leisure Lake. A place of mid-range Fords and Nissans, their angler-owners hidden around the shore. Jonas didn’t get it. There was something passive-aggressive in that unfathomable, over-equipped patience. Fishing was tailor-made for Slow TV, those ten-hour Norwegian epics; a fire burning in a grate, an old woman knitting. The presenter was unlikely to blaze that particular trail. His instinct was sensation, not slow, and if he seemed a bit nervy about sensation having brought him to a remote lake with the bogeyman he hid it well. He came back to the interview, the stark drama.

  Live at eight.

  Jonas Mortensen’s living room.

  ‘Your house is called End Point? Seriously? If we’d scripted this it couldn’t have been better. There’s so much tension having the partygoers there too. Genius! Can they ask questions?’

  ‘Course they can, there’s nothing to hide.’ The J-Man would let it all just flooow, Norway to now and all subjects open, even Lacey Lewis. The presenter beamed, already composing the Bafta acceptance speech. Then Jonas said he wanted to finish with a bombshell.

  ‘A revelation?’

  ‘A revelation.’

  ‘You gonna tell me what it is?’

  ‘Where’s the drama in that?’

  The presenter almost glittered. He closed his notebook and pressed the ignition button, taking the revs higher as he drove off, couldn’t resist hinting at that 300 hp Lexus engine.

  * * *

  The presenter dropped Jonas in the same lay-by down the road to the next village where he’d picked him up. Jonas watched the Lexus accelerate away and took the party posters from his rucksack. Purple felt-tip pen on mint green paper. He cringed again. No normal person wrote in purple, only wannabe maniacs knocking on the doors of the loony bin. Fight that urge to scream. Call Mary instead. But once more the person you are calling is unavailable...

  Forty

  Mary was unavailable to a whole range of people, not just Jonas. Names kept appearing on her mobile display, several numbers she didn’t recognise. People known and unknown knocked at her door. She saw them from the bedroom, peering round the curtains as they walked away.

  In the end she turned her phone off and snuck out to the garden shed. She had no intention of talking to anyone. Mary was frightened. If she couldn’t disappear then she would hide.

  She’d taken a book, which made it seem a bit more normal to skulk in a damp shed; it was just a quiet place to read, that’s all, Love in the Time of Cholera, one of those books you’re supposed to like but she’d never managed to get into. She’d been in there most of the day and hadn’t even glanced at it. Instead, she sat in the broken easy chair and poured cup after plastic cup of cheap Chardonnay from the three-litre wine box she’d also taken with her.

  Her husband used to like the shed. He’d tinker for hours with oily bits of car and motorbike. But he hadn’t done that in an age and would no more think of looking for her in the shed than up the chimney. In fact, no one would think of looking for Mary in the shed. She hated it though, it stank of mould. For a while she considered burning it to the ground. People probably even expected it after last night’s incid
ent, which was why everyone was calling her.

  It was the photographer’s fault. He was in her face as soon as she opened the front door of End Point. The flash momentarily blinded her so she lashed out and caught him on the chin.

  He stumbled backwards and fell over the garden wall to gasps and shouts from the onlookers.

  Mary was jostled as she pushed on through, more camera flashes and shouted questions, followed all the way by a TV cameraman, who managed to dance his way out of trouble and keep the lens fixed on her, an excited-looking female presenter babbling into a furry microphone. When Mary felt wetness on her cheek and realised it was spit she started to run.

  Again, the footage made the morning news. More drama in the Lacey disappearance, the same woman who last week... Mary watched on the bedroom TV. She could hear the TV in the living room but when she went downstairs her husband was watching cartoons. Daffy Duck. She burst into tears. Daffy bloody Duck. It made complete and perfect sense. Daffy Duck all noisy and frantic and her husband staring up at her from the couch. His gaze was hostile.

  Then softening. He stood up and came over to her. He pulled her close. He was good at this. The way he could hold her so tight. She needed no words, no reassurance, just to be held.

  The possibility of another bear hug would be gone by the time he got home. The last thing scrolling through his mind when he finally managed to track her down would be sympathy for his wife. Someone was bound to say something. He’d hear something on the radio...

  She poured another plastic cup. Took one sip, two sips then downed it and refilled, the cups were tiny and the box of wine apparently bottomless. With a grimace she realised Andrea had probably been calling. Her daughter was following Lacey’s disappearance like a soap opera, four or five texts a day. Mary doubted there would be a message like way to go mum, as after her haranguing of the journalists. In fact, she was more likely to turn up and ask what the hell was going on. Even now she might be dumping her bag on the floor of her old bedroom.