A Ghost at the Door

by Michael Dobbs

  It was all gone now. The home. His mother. Johnnie. Left him standing outside, his face wet, the rain trickling down his collar as his fingers searched once more for the comforting touch of the wristwatch. He was glad it was raining. Only he could be sure they were tears.

  According to Jemma’s devout and much-disparaged parents, God had a plan for everything, although they had failed to pass their strength of belief in a divine planning authority down to their daughter. The world had never seemed far short of chaos to Jemma and never more so than now. Bloody Harry. The kids didn’t help, either. That morning she’d taken Year 3 off in the school bus to the municipal swimming pool and even her well-practised ears were hurting as they screamed and splashed in the water while she stood on the side of the pool and made sure none of them drowned. The din was so great she almost missed the quiet words whispered in her ear.

  ‘Hiya, stranger. You look great.’

  She turned, her eyes widening in surprise. Oh, bugger. Steve Kaminski. ‘I don’t,’ she said, almost snapped, in contradiction. ‘I’m harassed and I barely got any sleep last night.’

  ‘That’s the way I remember it.’

  How long had it been? Three years? Her affair with Steve Kaminski hadn’t been prolonged but it had been passionate and he knew all about what she looked like without enough sleep. Now he was gazing at her in his way that said she was both desirable and desired. He did that for all the girls, of course, which was why it had always been clear to Jemma that they were never going to grow old together, but the realization hadn’t got in the way of a few healthy and drawn-out nights and a weekend in Amsterdam.

  ‘Hello, Steve. What are you doing here?’

  ‘Much the same as when we first met.’ He taught at another local school that shared this pool.

  ‘I heard you’d got engaged,’ she said.

  ‘Yes. That’s right. Then I got myself disengaged. Wasn’t sure I was over you, J.’

  ‘Bollocks.’

  He began laughing in that natural, infectious manner he had. ‘Hey, why not come back for a swim later? Catch up with each other.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘You know bloody well why not, Steve.’ There had been that moment in the changing rooms those years ago that might have got both of them sacked. ‘Anyway, unlike you, I am engaged.’

  ‘Great. Congratulations. I’m really pleased for you. He’s a lucky man, I hope he appreciates that.’

  And there was something in her eye that she feared might have betrayed her.

  ‘A drink. For old times’ sake, J.’

  She looked at him, suddenly felt weak, and turned.

  ‘I’ll give you a call,’ he said to her back as she made herself walk away.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Christ Church, Oxford. Once known as Cardinal College in honour of its founder, Thomas Wolsey, until he fell foul of the king and was stripped of his reputation. Despite the downfall of its founder, it continued to thrive in both treasure and reputation. Over the centuries it had provided thirteen prime ministers along with any number of imperial viceroys and governors-general, and yet for all its pomp had still found room for a poor Welsh brat. Perhaps that was why Johnnie had clung so tenaciously to the double barrel, as cover for being conceived in an air-raid shelter. Harry entered his father’s college through the gate beneath Sir Christopher Wren’s pepper pot of a tower and, in a few paces, the bustle of St Aldate’s and the High had been left behind. He found himself in a great Tudor quadrangle, known simply as Tom. The sun was splashing across the weathered limestone walls, sending shadows reaching out across the meticulously manicured lawns, while at the centre of the quad the fountain spilled out a careless fanfare of water music beneath the feet of the bronze figure of Mercury. Overfed carp with petulant mouths peered up through the lilies. The bell from the tower struck noon, as it had done on every day for more than four hundred years. All seemed well and safe with this world.

  ‘Ah, Sir Cecil’s guest,’ the elderly porter announced with a distinct Oxford burr as Harry presented himself at the lodge. The porter looked up, staring over his glasses as he stuck a tentative thumb in his waistcoat pocket. ‘Begging your pardon, zur, but didn’t you used to be . . .?’

  ‘That’s right. Harry Jones.’

  ‘Yes, of course. Welcome to Christ Church, Mr Jones. Were you one of our young gentlemen in your time?’

  ‘No, but my father was an undergraduate here.’

  ‘Well, you’ll find that nothing much has changed. We’ve put you in the Meadows Building, if that’s in order with you, zur. Staircase Seven.’ He pushed a key across the counter. ‘It’s supposed to be haunted, like, is that staircase. Not a bother to you, I hope.’

  ‘That’s why I’m here. To look up a few old ghosts.’

  ‘Come to the right place, then, so you have.’ The porter’s crumpled face cracked into a broad smile.

  Harry dragged his overnight case through the quad. A group of students dressed in their formal subfusc academic gowns and white bow ties were in high spirits, spilling over the grass, drinking champagne and exchanging tearful embraces as they celebrated the end of their Finals. He’d done that once, he remembered, when it seemed as if there was no limit to what lay ahead. For a brief moment Harry felt a pang of jealousy at the seeming simplicity of their world. As he stared, one of the young women danced towards him.

  ‘You looking for your son?’ she asked.

  He was taken aback. ‘No, my father . . .’

  She laughed, all high spirits and alcohol, having no idea what he was talking about. She reached up and kissed his cheek, then laughed once again and scampered back to her friends.

  He dropped his bag in the guest room and sought out the Steward’s Office, which he found in the lee of the college chapel, which also doubled as the city’s cathedral. Nothing here was done by halves, not even dealing with God. ‘Hello, my name’s Harry Jones,’ he announced to the attractive young blonde who sat at a large and cluttered desk in the outer office.

  ‘And I’m Helen,’ she said, smiling and squinting at the same time, as though she was using the wrong prescription in her glasses. ‘How can I help you?’

  ‘I’m dining on High Table this evening with Sir Cecil Pisani but, before that, I was wondering . . . My father was here. Johnnie Maltravers-Jones.’

  ‘Oh, yes. Of course.’ A ripple of curiosity ran across her brow.

  ‘What? You couldn’t have known him?’ Harry spluttered in surprise.

  ‘Not knew him, exactly, but I’m sure I know of him. I think he was one of our regular donors until he . . .’

  ‘Yes, he died.’

  She nodded and squinted a little more.

  ‘He was a donor,’ Harry said softly, his voice rising in surprise. ‘I had no idea.’

  ‘Very reliable he was. Every year.’

  ‘How . . .’ Harry was about to say how bloody uncharacteristic but choked it back down, making do with, ‘How good to know. So maybe you might be able to help me after all. I know it’s a long shot, Helen, but I was wondering whether you had any information about him, perhaps some old photos with his classmates. He came up here in 1962.’

  ‘Oh, dear, it was a long time ago and we weren’t very good with records then.’ She sucked the tip of her forefinger in concentration. ‘I think the only thing we’re likely to’ve kept is the formal Freshers photo – the one we take of every new class. It would simply be one of him with about a hundred or so others.’

  ‘That’s fine – it’s some of his friends I’m trying to track down.’ He pulled out the photo set around the dining table.

  ‘Well, they wouldn’t all have been at Christ Church, of course, not the women, not in those days.’ Her squint grew more pronounced. ‘What year was it, did you say?’

  And soon Harry was seated at a desk beside a window overlooking the Dean’s garden, where once a young mathematician named Charles Dodgson, better known as Lewis Carroll, had spotted an earli
er dean’s daughter whose name was Alice and turned her into one of the most formidable literary creations of all time. On the desk in front of him was a wide card-mounted image of around a hundred and twenty young men ranged in six long rows, all in formal academic dress and paraded before the Library; beside this he propped up his own rather more crumpled photo. The images of the Freshers photo were small, grainy, black and white, and there was plenty of youthful hair to help mask the facial features. Harry borrowed a magnifying glass and stared.

  It took him several moments before he found him. Third row near the middle. Johnnie, youthful confidence shining from every pore, with even the suggestion of a moustache struggling to make an appearance on his upper lip. And looking to one side, not straight ahead. Bloody typical. A shiver ran down Harry’s back and through his plastered arm until his fingers tingled; there was no denying the fact that it looked so much like his own Freshers photo when he was at Cambridge. Now Harry began ransacking the other faces, desperate to find one he might recognise. ‘Jemma, where the devil are you when I need you?’ he muttered.

  ‘Can I help?’ Helen enquired from the other side of the room.

  ‘I was just trying to spot a connection,’ he said, rather pathetically.

  She came over, squinted at the faces in his photo, then screwed up her face some more as she bent over the formal photo. ‘Why, there, of course. Sort of cute, don’t you think?’ She pointed to a face at the end of the rear row. It was one of only three non-white faces in the group, not black but certainly of darker hue than the rest, burned by some foreign sun with its features almost lost in the depths of the ancient window behind it. He kicked himself. It was the face of the young man seated on the other side of Susannah to his father. He stared through the magnifying glass, then back at the dining scene. No mistake. Even he could see it now. ‘And who are you?’ he whispered.

  Helen simply turned the photo over; on its back, secured by yellowed tape that was cracking with age, was a list of names, its letters punched from an old electric typewriter. Her finger ran along the line.

  Ali Abu al-Masri.

  ‘I think he was a good friend of your father’s,’ Helen announced. ‘He also used to give to the college.’

  ‘Do you know where I can find him?’

  ‘Oh, dear, Mr Jones, I scarcely know how to tell you this, but he died, too. Shortly before your father.’

  The world seemed to be slowing down, almost to a standstill. Harry could hear himself breathing. He also heard himself asking how al-Masri had died.

  Helen grew visibly distressed.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Harry said, trying to reassure her.

  ‘No, it’s not, Mr Jones, not at all. It was awful. You see, he was assassinated. Blown up. A car bomb. It took him and his entire family.’

  ‘Do you believe in coincidence, Cecil?’

  The politician-turned-academic puckered his expressive, rather damp lips in thought. ‘There are times when I find it a convenience, Harry. A useful excuse. But I fear Lady Rachel was a social worker before I married her and still does good works at Her Majesty’s places of incarceration, and as a result has developed a hard carapace of cynicism. The defence of coincidence in our family is rather over-quarried, I fear. And in my case utterly depleted.’ The Pickwickian figure of Sir Cecil Pisani stared over his sherry glass with eyes like old oysters and smiled. He might have influence in the college and at one point have ruled over half the kingdom, but on the home front his servitude to Lady Rachel was legendary. ‘Why d’you ask, dear boy?’

  They were taking preprandial drinks in the Senior Common Room, where the walls were covered with panelling and portraits of old members and would have been recognized without hesitation by Charles Dodgson. A steward helped Harry into the academic gown that was still worn for dinner, threading his cast through the folds of heavy black cotton.

  ‘There was a friend of my father. They matriculated in the same year and died within months of each other.’

  ‘Not such a coincidence after all, then. Little more than the depredations of age, I fear.’

  ‘No, not quite. His name was Ali Abu al-Masri. He was murdered, blown up in his car.’

  ‘Ah.’ His position outflanked, Sir Cecil sighed and shook his wattles. ‘I’ve heard his name mentioned. Let us make enquiries. Kathy!’ He turned to the busy room and summoned a colleague who was part of a group that had gathered around the mantelpiece above an unlit grate. ‘Katherine is the money man around here, knows where everything is buried – Kathy, my dear, Ali Abu al-Masri. What can you tell us?’

  Katherine Pontefract was no more than five foot four, even in heels, which caused her to bounce on the balls of her feet as she spoke as if to gain height and look the others in the eye. Her eyes were dark and intense, and a little weary, her hair cropped short and a surprising shade of claret. ‘Ali was a great loss to this college,’ she declared in a voice cut from the working face of a Yorkshire coal pit, and stroking the bridge of her nose with a forefinger as though inspecting for dust. ‘A regular donor and a great authority on Middle Eastern matters. Perhaps too great an authority, mind, flew too close to the flame. Got himself assassinated, in Beirut, I think it was, about ten years ago, perhaps a little more. One of those interminable political feuds.’

  ‘He was a politician?’ Harry asked.

  ‘Who isn’t in the desert?’ she replied, bobbing. ‘But he wasn’t exactly a politician, not officially. More of a . . . a facilitator, a constructor of networks, a man who pitched his tent in many places.’

  ‘Not all of them very welcoming, apparently,’ Harry added drily.

  ‘It was most distressing.’

  ‘He was a friend of my father’s. I was wondering if they might have been in business together. Tell me, what business was Mr al-Masri in?’

  Pontefract leveraged herself to her full extent with an expression that suggested Harry might have trodden on the most sensitive of corns. ‘I have absolutely no idea. Not the slightest.’ Her voice was firm, brooking no contradiction, even though Harry didn’t believe a word. ‘It’s enough, don’t you think, that he was an alumnus of this college and willing to help educate a new generation of young men and women?’

  ‘As was my father, I believe.’

  ‘Your father?’

  ‘Johnnie Maltravers-Jones.’

  At the mention of Johnnie’s name she relaxed a little, stopped bobbing. ‘Who was also a generous benefactor. Great pity he’s no longer with us.’

  Harry suspected she was talking about his money rather than any social loss. While Kathy Pontefract wittered away, the door of the Common Room opened once more and an elderly man entered. He was tall, stood out among the crowd, with a long, finely chiselled face and high cheekbones that bore the blush of a life spent facing into the wind. His hair was thick for his age, well cut and remarkably white; his manner was confident and his blue eyes were alert, taking in everything around him. A colleague reached for his sleeve but the man merely dipped his head politely, moved on, intent on discovering more challenging game. He was threading his way elegantly through the throng when he saw Harry and his face clouded in bewilderment. Then, with barely half a pause of hesitation, he crossed directly to him.

  ‘Harry? Harry Jones? Why, what a coincidence.’

  ‘No, we don’t believe in such things,’ Sir Cecil declared.

  ‘I’m sorry, do we know each other?’ Harry asked, mystified.

  The other man extended his hand and smiled generously. The grip was firm. ‘My name’s Alexander McQuarrel. I knew your father. And you, too, when you were much younger – about eight, I think you were, the last time. And recently I met your lovely partner, Miss Laing. Didn’t she mention it?’

  Something else he and Jemma hadn’t got round to discussing, it seemed. ‘No. I’ve been away.’

  ‘Yes, she said.’

  And before they could take the matter further they were distracted as the steward summoned them to dinner.

  �
��Perhaps we can talk afterwards,’ McQuarrel suggested.

  ‘If you’ve got time.’

  ‘For you, Harry – if I may call you Harry – I’ll make the time. We have much to discuss.’

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  ‘Is Tamanna coming?’

  ‘She left a message. She’ll be half an hour late.’

  ‘And Laurie?’

  ‘He’s always half an hour late.’

  ‘Then I suppose we’d better get started,’ the convener, Hayley, said with an air of resignation as she opened her folder.

  The small group was seated around an over-varnished bar table in a corner of a South London pub, all teachers from neighbouring schools gathered to form the coordinating committee tasked with agreeing the arrangements for the Annual Inter-School Water and Waves Festival. There was a time when it had simply been called a swimming competition until some razor mind had decided that sounded all too judgemental.

  ‘Hi, J,’ a voice said.

  Jemma looked up, startled, as a bottle of Mexican beer with a lime in its mouth was put in front of her and Steve Kaminski slipped into the seat beside her. ‘Steve, I didn’t know . . .’

  ‘What, that I’m on the coordinating committee? Would you have returned my phone calls if you’d known?’

  ‘I’ve been busy. You know what it’s like in a summer term.’ It sounded pathetic, they both knew it, and she reached for the beer. Her favourite brand. ‘You remembered.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘That’s spooky. You keep a file or something?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘You’re kidding!’ she cried in alarm.

  He burst into laughter. ‘Oh, J,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Anyway, I wouldn’t need a file to remember everything about you.’

  She couldn’t stop herself from blushing. She bent her head pretending to study the papers in front of her, hoping he hadn’t noticed, knowing he had.