A Ghost in the Machine

by Caroline Graham

  Anyway, it was half expected these days, the way things were. Every day, workers with pension funds woke up to find they had halved in value, if not worse. Insurance companies actually trained staff in how to avoid paying out. Honest investors lost thousands through companies still paying their directors obscene bonuses. If that wasn’t theft, what was?

  And surely the reasons behind a crime should be taken into account? In her case they were admirable ones. She had stolen for love. It had seemed to her a matter of life and death.

  Not so her partner. She had regarded his involvement as purely a matter of greed. He denied this. For him the robbery had been a question of freedom. “Call me a freedom fighter!” he had shouted, laughing and half drunk, not long after their first meeting in the Peacock Hotel.

  He had delivered her from a terrible assault. On the pretence of setting up a business meeting a repulsive man had lured her there; wedged her into a tight corner and urged her to have sex with him. When she’d refused he’d almost climbed into her lap, all the while pouring depraved and filthy suggestions into her ears.

  Shaking and on the verge of tears, she’d caught the eye of someone about to buy a drink, who saw the man off. That was when it all started. Overwhelmed by gratitude she was surprised to find her rescuer knew who she was. He had seen her, apparently, at Carey Lawson’s funeral, though they had not been introduced. Somehow this seemed to make it all right to talk to him. A couple of brandies later and Judith had told him everything. She had described Ashley fading away before her eyes; clients disappearing, her desperate need for money. How she had sold nearly everything they owned that was sellable and now there was only the house and that was mortgaged.

  He too had a tale of woe. Married to a gorgon of a woman who doled out pocket money for services rendered and if he couldn’t she didn’t. Humiliated by being forced to sit in an office all day, pretending to be of use when everyone knew it was only because his wife owned half the business he was there at all. The other half – well, he assumed Judith knew Dennis Brinkley? Could there be some way she and himself could help each other? Why not start by sharing their strengths and weaknesses?

  This didn’t take long. It quickly became plain that Judith had all the strengths while Drew, as he had asked to be called, owned up to all the weaknesses. However, as the conversation developed, both terms proved inappropriate. Knowledge, it seemed, would be the counter with which to play the game.

  There was little Judith didn’t know about offshore accounts, tax dodges, stock exchange fiddles and money scams generally. All accountants pick up such information along the way. Only the bent ones make use of it. And computers held no mystery for her. She had been working with them all her life.

  Drew knew nothing of such matters. What he had to offer was access to lots and lots and lots of money via a key to the street door and main office of Brinkley and Latham, plus the combination to a safe that held the passwords for all the main office accounts. For good measure he also threw in cautionary tips on how to avoid detection. Mainly this seemed to involve keeping a sharp eye out for the nosy fishmonger opposite when entering or leaving the building. And speed, once inside, must be of the essence. Shift a lot of stuff in two or three visits max, casting the net wide. Smallish amounts from lots of accounts, suggested Drew, soon mounted up and were less likely to be detected. Judith explained that detection would take some time anyway, as false entries would have to be made to cover the debits, however small. Drew was impressed.

  They talked and talked, getting more and more exhilarated. He bought a bottle of cheap sparkling wine. They saw it off and Judith ordered another. Later, though, getting out of her car and stumbling up Trevelyan’s garden path, the intoxication began to drain away. And by the time she had taken off her coat and drunk several glasses of water, she could not imagine what on earth had possessed her. God – she must have been mad.

  Running a bath, pouring in lots of scented oil, she attempted to wash away the dirt from the infected early part of the evening and the insanely dangerous fantasy of the final two hours. Eventually she crawled into bed, falling into an uneasy sleep. Her last thought was, he must be feeling just like this. It was the drink talking. Tomorrow it will all seem like a crazy dream. But in the morning, when the phone rang and he asked if it was still on she said “yes” straightaway.

  They met only twice after this although they spoke several times on the telephone. Everything worked smoothly. As Judith did not have access to Dennis Brinkley’s private office, his fatal accident hardly caused a blip on the screen of her activities. But as the police had been involved, albeit tangentially, she decided it would be safer to extricate a final amount to bring them near to their aimed sum for balance and quit.

  Not reading the local paper, which she rightly described as illiterate rubbish, Judith had missed entirely the fact that a self-styled medium, boasting a knowledge of Dennis Brinkley’s death, had herself passed away in somewhat mysterious circumstances. This item hit the national press as she and Ashley were boarding Swissair at Stansted. And even if the news of what would soon be recognised as a double murder had been brought to her attention, she would never have linked it with the man she knew only as Drew. Judith had sized him up pretty thoroughly at their first meeting. Weak, desperate, good-looking in a faded, second-division soap star sort of way. Wouldn’t hurt a fly.

  The new owners of Kinders considered the name rather an affectation and restyled the building the Old School House. He was a banker, she did graphic design, working from home. They had three children and a live-in nanny. Their architect had transformed the place. Four bedrooms, two bathrooms and living rooms, and a crescent-shaped kitchen that ran halfway round the ground floor. The arrow slits had been bricked in and replaced by huge windows. The interior was now flooded with light and there was a shiny new red front door.

  Everyone said to Benny, “You wouldn’t know the place,” but of course she always would. Her last visit had been impressed, as with a branding iron, on to her conscious mind. She accepted that this was so and would always be so. She understood too that the agonising, sharp-edged pain to which her heart had, at last, been gently opened would blunt and soften in time. Even so, she remained glad that the larger half of life’s allotted span was now behind her.

  After her cruel awakening to the self-protecting lie that had seemed to promise happy ever after, Benny forgot all about her talisman. The frantic craving for security that had obsessed her every waking moment simply vanished. Why yearn for something that didn’t and couldn’t exist?

  Happily, love and friendship were still present in her life. Mallory had always been reciprocally dear but Benny was gradually becoming more and more fond of Kate, who was tremendously kind and supportive. She seemed to sense when Benny needed to talk – only recently ever the case – and when she wished just to be quiet. And both she and Mallory urged Benny to sleep at Appleby House if she was ever lonely.

  Benny, on the deepest level of her being, was always lonely, though she derived great comfort from their kindness. But to her surprise it was the business, the Celandine Press, that helped her most through the first months after the court case and successful prosecution of the man who had caused Dennis’s death.

  There was so much to do in the office, most of it quite alien to Benny’s previous experience. But Kate explained things clearly and was always on the spot if a problem arose. It was plain from the outset that both she and Mallory had complete confidence in Benny’s ability to cope. And so Benny coped, calmly and even with a certain élan. She was especially good at handling distressed authors, of whom there were many. It was not at all uncommon for Kate or Mallory to pick up the phone, only to have whoever was on the other end refuse to speak to anyone but Miss Frayle. After the hoped-for conversation, the writer, although nothing definite about the reception of his or her manuscript had actually been said, would hang up, feeling both consoled and valued. Mallory asked Benny once how she did it and Benny replied simply, �
��I know how they feel.”

  Every day at five, when the office officially closed, she would go to the churchyard. Actually, this present afternoon she was a little late, easing open the lych-gate with some difficulty, balancing her folding stool, a small hand fork and a damp cloth.

  Containing only his ashes, Dennis’s grave was barely half the size of the others. With permission from the vicar it had been edged with very old barley-sugar tiles from the garden at Appleby House. Benny had hoped to plant some rosemary too, for remembrance, but the Reverend Johnson had demurred, saying it was rather a strong grower for such a small space. So instead she usually included one or two sprigs with whatever other flowers she brought along.

  The leaves had just started to fall. Tough, leathery ones, glowing ruby and bright amber, they covered the grave. Benny picked them off, loosened and removed a single weed, which had appeared overnight, opened her folding canvas stool and settled down.

  It was a good time to come, the hinge of the day. There would rarely be anyone around, even in the summer. If there was she would talk to Dennis silently. She had already told him about the discovery of The King’s Armourer. About how Kate, dazed with disbelief, had brought it home from Kinders. The excitement it had raised: the happiness, the sorrow. Now Benny described briefly how the editing was going. Kate had said there was hardly anything to do, barely a cut to make. The book raced ahead of you, was how she described it. Vivid as a dream.

  To ring the changes Benny would also talk about the non-business part of her day. Small domestic matters – ordering Madonna lilies from the new de Jaeger catalogue; Croydon’s injured paw, now coming along nicely after antibiotics from the vet. A pair of new linen curtains for the kitchen window patterned with forget-me-nots, blue as the sky.

  Occasionally she would touch on village affairs – quarrelling in the church choir, yet another appeal to the Lottery Commission for a new village hall. Other times she would just sit, quietly crying out her grief, while the rooks wheeled and shrieked unnoticed above her head.

  Quite often Dennis would be present. Not in any weird or mystical way – Benny had had no further truck with the Church of the Near at Hand – but just kind of solidly there. Asked to explain this she wouldn’t have known where to start. All in the mind people would have said, though Benny knew that wasn’t true. If it had been she could have conjured him up at any time. As it was, there was never any warning: just a sort of gathering of energy that slowly intensified. Her ears would hum a bit. The air changed, becoming warm and so close there was even a slight feeling of pressure. Then she was no longer alone.

  Whenever this happened Benny would experience an overwhelming rush of gratitude. She always remembered to thank God in her prayers for such a gift of grace. To have had thirty years of true and loving companionship was blessing enough, but to still be aware of his dear presence…

  Benny took several deep breaths and sat up straight. She could hear voices. An elderly couple were coming up the path with some chrysanthemums and a watering can. She folded up her stool, took out her cloth and carefully removed some specks of dirt from the stone on Dennis’s grave. It was of pale grey marble, veined with cream. The description, in plain gold letters, read simply:

  DENNIS BRINKLEY

  WRITER

  1946–2001

  Karen was now quite used to Dr. Dickenson. She had visited his surgery several times, once with her bad cough, now completely better, but also after falling from the parallel bars in the school gym and hurting her leg. Aunty Doris had gone with her to hospital where they’d taken a photograph of it and put the picture up on the wall for her to see. Another time they’d had a different sort of look at her head and that was called a scan.

  The best part, the most important part, was that it had been absolutely true what the doctor had promised. She had told him the very thing that frightened her most, the thing she had promised Ava never ever to tell anyone, and it had been all right. Nobody had come to take her away. Or lock her in a cupboard and throw the key down a bottomless well like Ava told her they would. All the doctor said was he knew a special person who would be able to help Karen and that he’d arrange an appointment as soon as possible.

  It seemed ages before they heard. Karen wasn’t worried; for her the worst was over. But Aunty Doris was. Karen noticed her all the time looking for the postman. When the letter finally came she nearly ripped the envelope to bits getting it out. When she’d read it she went very quiet and gave it to Ernest. Later, Karen found Doris crying. She climbed on to Doris’s knee and hugged her, saying that she mustn’t be sad because now everything would be getting better. “You’ll see” – Karen was solemn and assured – “soon all the hurting will go away.”

  Although the letter had been signed “Dr. Barbara Lester,” and the appointment was at a proper clinic, when the day finally came the room where Karen found herself was more like a nursery than a surgery. There were squashy armchairs, a sofa and a whole range of things to have fun with. Shelves full of soft toys and dolls and others holding tanks and planes and Action Men and Lego. Lots of coloured pens and paints and paper were on a low table and a computer stood on a desk by the open window next to a stack of boxed tapes. There was even a doll’s house.

  “Where would you like to sit, Karen?”

  Dr. Lester didn’t look much like a doctor either. It wasn’t just that she didn’t have a white coat or a thing round her neck for listening to your chest, she looked, well…a bit like Karen’s PE teacher. She’d got quite a short denim skirt on and one of those shirts that tied up in a knot round your waist. Her bare feet were in white sandals. She was already sitting down, on the puffy yellow sofa. Karen sat in the nearest armchair, which had a large box of tissues balanced on one of the arms.

  “Can I put this on the floor?”

  “Of course you can.”

  “Only my cold’s better now.”

  Karen watched intently as the doctor put some glasses on and took a folder from a briefcase resting on the carpet nearby. There didn’t seem to be much in the folder. She read it in what Ernest would call “the shake of a lamb’s tail.”

  Dr. Lester was rather surprised at the picture the little girl presented. Having been a child psychiatrist for thirteen years she had come across every attitude in the book and quite a few others you wouldn’t believe but Karen’s was most unusual. In the first place, her expression was totally unworried. She appeared confident, happy even, sitting forwards eagerly on the edge of her seat, as if expecting some entertainment to begin.

  “I’ve been waiting ever such a long while to see you.”

  You and a hundred others, dear. And already the clock was ticking their time together away. The doctor’s notes told a familiar story. Physical neglect, psychological abuse, no love to speak of. And unfortunately no grandparents to buffer sorrow. But now the mother had died and the child was being fostered, very successfully, by all accounts. She suffered constantly from noises and chattering and pains in her head.

  Dr. Lester was not surprised to note the GP’s suspicions of early schizophrenia. Even laypeople jumped to this conclusion, given such symptoms. However, there were other early signs and these were not present. One also had to make allowances for the imagination. Wretched and lonely children will struggle to conjure alternative worlds in an attempt to escape the horrors of the real one. Karen’s fantasies were incredibly inventive.

  Dr. Lester smiled, offered some sweets from a glass bowl, suggested Karen called her Barbara. They talked for a few minutes about the successful present. How kind Aunty Doris was. Uncle Ernest’s birds. Roy’s beautiful new dog, Dancer.

  “And I’m in a higher class at school. We’re going to talk French.”

  “You like school?”

  “It’s great. I was in the Christmas play.”

  “I played Aladdin once – in a hospital pantomime. How did you get on?”

  “I couldn’t really learn it very well.”

  “Because of your h
eadaches?”

  “That’s right. It’s hard when everyone’s talking at once.”

  “I believe they started just after your mother died?”

  “That’s why they started. I explained to Dr. Dickenson.”

  “Yes. But there can be other reasons for headaches, Karen. For instance, if we cry a lot—”

  “And she didn’t just die. Someone gave her poison.”

  “Really?”

  “Like Snow White.”

  “That’s a fairy story, isn’t it?” Dr. Lester paused, waited. “Do you like fairy stories?”

  “No.” Karen remembered pricking her finger and waking up without a prince. “They’re all lies.”

  “Do you find it difficult to tell the difference?” Karen looked puzzled. “Between what’s true and what we make up.”

  Karen shook her head and the gossamer hair lifted and floated in slow motion, like thistledown.

  “I’d like to talk about when you were little, if that’s all right?” Karen shrugged. “How far back do you remember?”

  “For ever.”

  “Tell me the first thing.”

  “You mean when I was born?”

  “A bit further on. Playgroup, say.”

  “What’s a playgroup?”

  “OK, when you went to primary school. Did you make friends there?”

  “I’ve never had a friend.” This was delivered without a trace of self-pity. She could have been saying: I’ve never had a mobile. Or a bicycle.

  “What about imaginary friends?”

  Karen stared at Dr. Lester in amazement. She couldn’t help thinking that it wasn’t herself who didn’t know the difference between what was true and what people make up. Then she wondered if it was a trick question. Or perhaps a joke. It was certainly pretty funny. She said politely: “You can’t have imaginary friends, Doctor…um…Barbara.”