A Ghost at the Door

by Michael Dobbs

No one bothered Delicious. The terrace was busy, the staff scurrying after other customers, the tourists on the pathway below passing by, oblivious. If they looked up and saw anything it was no more than a woman resting in the sun. Lucky girl. Only the sparrow seemed to take an interest, hopping onto the table, fluttering its feathers in hope of attracting interest and crumbs. It was a considerable time before the waitress, a shy girl recently arrived from Estonia, approached Delicious to reclaim the table. Something wasn’t right. The sparrow had left a fresh blob of guano beside her hand, yet she hadn’t moved. Fast asleep, perhaps. Then the young waitress saw the sticky, sightless eyes gazing into nowhere, dropped the tray with all its crockery and fled screaming. Afternoon tea in the park was cancelled.

  It was only minutes before two constables in a patrol car pulled up on the pathway. Very quickly they called for backup. It wasn’t simply that the body was so young that aroused their suspicions, nor even the Bermudan Police ID they found in her handbag. The main problem was that her lifeless hand was on her phone and it seemed she’d been trying to dial 999 but managed only the first two digits. Anyway, Downing Street was only a dog bark distant, far too close to take anything for granted, so, before the geese had time to honk in protest a Murder Investigation Team had arrived, the onlookers had been pushed back and the restaurant cordoned off behind police tape.

  The phone became a crucial piece of evidence. It showed its last contact as being with a man the call log identified only as Harry. He was on his way to meet up with her. It showed he’d been in touch almost since the moment she’d arrived in Britain.

  Police coverage of the Westminster area is handled out of Charing Cross police station, the stucco-fronted building on Agar Street that Delicious had left less than two hours previously. It didn’t take long for the names of Inspector Hope and a man named Harry to circulate and reach the ears of DCI Hughie Edwards. The name of Susannah Ranelagh followed only moments behind. It was a perfect storm for the DCI, a combination of events that threatened to turn his world upside down and drown him. Yet on the other hand, if he played it right, it might just mean that promotion to superintendent that the arse-wipers had denied him twice already. He’d always reckoned he deserved a super’s job. His papers were in for it again, one last throw of the dice. It would mean a much better pension, a bigger lump sum. It would also mean taking a few risks but that’s what good coppers did – at least the ones who pulled in the results. He swore most colourfully, sat at his desk with his head in his hands impugning Harry’s parentage for several minutes. Then he went to see his boss, the chief superintendent.

  It took only a few more minutes after that for Harry’s phone to spring into life.

  ‘Harry, where are you?’

  ‘Hi, Hughie. I’m sitting beneath a plane tree in Dean’s Yard ogling a couple of Italian tourists.’

  ‘Stay there. You sodding stay there. Don’t you dare bloody move.’

  Then the phone went dead.

  Dean’s Yard is an unexpected corner of Westminster, a secluded quadrangle in the lee of the twin towers at the western end of the Abbey. It was once a medieval monastery and now forms part of the estate of Westminster School. The boys play football on the grass and even claim to have invented the game, while in summer when they’ve packed their trunks and buggered off to Benidorm the area turns a profit by offering tea and cake to weary travellers. Dean’s Yard is no stranger to lawlessness. In medieval times the area around the Abbey was renowned for a noisome mix of debauchery and rampant criminality – it contained countless brothels, was the site of murders and insurrection and near at hand was a quarter named Thieving Lane, rumoured to be the site on which HM Treasury is now built. Dean’s Yard was used to claim the ancient right of sanctuary from arrest and was ideal for the purpose. It has restricted access and so proved ideal to repel attack from bailiffs. By the same token it made it a bloody difficult place from which to escape.

  Even from within the Yard Harry could hear the commotion, the sound of sirens wailing back and forth outside the walls. Then the sirens stopped their rushing and instead were parked insistently close at hand. Harry was sitting at a table beneath the shade of the trees when he saw policemen beginning to pour through the gates at both ends of the Yard. They were in a hurry, like eels swarming between the reeds; a table was knocked over, a woman screamed, a child began to cry. It took Harry a second before he realized that every single one of the policemen was headed for him. As he sipped from his mug of tea he found that a forest of dark-blue bulletproof jackets and helmets had sprung up around him, sprouting Heckler & Koch muzzles. Nine-millimetre cartridges. He’d seen what one of those could do. A neat and subdued hole in the chest that could blast through the spine and leave a hole like a whale bite in the back. An angry whale. The mug of tea froze to his lips as he tried to figure out what the hell was going on. Then the forest parted and the substantial form of DCI Hughie Edwards emerged.

  ‘Hello, Harry,’ he said, yet with no welcome in his voice.

  ‘What the hell’s going on, Hughie?’

  ‘You’re coming to help us with our enquiries.’

  ‘Into what?’

  ‘The sudden and very unexpected death of your friend, Inspector Hope.’

  There were more words, about his being arrested, about his not having to say anything, about what he did say being used in evidence, but Harry heard none of it. He was frozen. What was left of his tea was slowly trickling onto his trouser leg, but he didn’t move, didn’t even notice. He didn’t flex a muscle until he was hauled to his feet by two oversized policemen clad in body armour. They tried to handcuff him but it wouldn’t work, not with his cast. Edwards shook his head in resignation and Harry was bundled into a waiting patrol car.

  ‘How the hell can you think I had anything to do with her death?’ Harry spat.

  ‘Which of the dozen compelling reasons do you want me to get to first?’ Edwards replied. His eyes were full of storm and suspicion, like a gale blowing off Swansea Bay, and it had taken all trace of their friendship with it.

  They were facing each other in an interview room at Charing Cross. The atmosphere was recycled, the floor worn, the walls painted in two different shades of ageing magnolia. A sergeant sat beside the DCI while Theo van Buren, Harry’s solicitor, was next to his client. Harry’s clothes had been taken from him for forensics and replaced by a one-piece white romper suit manufactured from recycled bottle tops. The two sides were separated by a table whose veneer was distinctly chipped. So was the civility.

  ‘We’d like to know what grounds you have for holding my client,’ van Buren insisted.

  Edwards began counting off on his thick fingers. ‘Your client knew the deceased. He was involved in a serious ongoing investigation that had brought Inspector Hope to Britain. He met the inspector at her hotel within hours of her arriving in this country. He was the last person to make contact with her on her phone. They had arranged to meet. He was in the area at the time she died.’ He’d run out of fingers. ‘You think that’s enough for us to be getting on with?’

  ‘You don’t know for a fact she was murdered,’ the solicitor replied.

  ‘And I don’t know there’s not a Santa Claus but I’m working on the assumption that it’s a pretty safe bet.’

  ‘Hughie, I want to help you as much as I can.’ Harry interrupted the professional jousting. ‘Delicious was a friend. A close friend, I think. And I’ll save you the trouble by betting every bottle in the brewery that she was murdered.’

  ‘So why d’you suppose the lady was murdered, Mr Jones?’

  ‘She was looking for Susannah Ranelagh. Both of us were. And we both believed Miss Ranelagh is dead.’

  ‘Another body? Just drags you in deeper.’

  ‘I believe she was here this morning, discussing the case.’

  ‘I know she was. With me.’

  ‘Then you know what I’m saying is true.’

  ‘What I know, Harry’ – it was the first time he’d used hi
s Christian name or deigned to accept that there was anything other than formal hostility between the two of them – ‘is there’s something deeply unpleasant going on here. Smells like a sewer, so it does, and you’re right in it up to your neck. So why don’t you tell us all about it?’

  ‘You know my interest in Susannah Ranelagh.’

  ‘Do I?’ An eyebrow arched in warning. Ah, of course, that was the reason for the edge in Edwards’s tone. The DCI was in this mess, too, if not up to his neck then at least up to the hole in his trouser pocket. They both knew that with hindsight he should never have shared anything with Harry privately, yet there was nothing to be gained for either of them by admitting to it. So it had never happened. ‘Why don’t you start from the beginning?’ Edwards suggested, leading the witness onto safer ground.

  So they sat and spoke, for more than an hour, about Susannah Ranelagh, and about Bermuda, although Harry decided to talk only in the gentlest terms concerning his father. The more complicated this got, the longer it would take him to dig his way out from beneath the avalanche of circumstance and suspicion that was threatening to bury him.

  Search squads don’t knock, not in murder cases. Their task is to secure evidence that might be flushed away in seconds, so protecting feelings comes way down the list. Often they will simply batter down the door but there was no need for that in Harry’s case: they had his keys. Even so, they didn’t hang around or waste time on common courtesies. They were investigating a probable murder, of a police colleague; anyway, they had no idea someone else was in the apartment. They swarmed through the front door and into the living room to find the windows open, a fan pushing around the thick evening air, and Jemma sitting at the table wearing nothing but a thin cotton crop-top and knickers. Some women would have screamed, others fled to the bathroom, a fair few fainted, but Jemma had her own ways. She sprang to her feet and started shouting at them to get out of her fucking home before she called the Daily Mail. The leader of the search team, a detective inspector, wilted beneath the broadside, taking a step back and ushering forward a female colleague.

  ‘What the bloody hell do you think you’re doing?’ Jemma stormed, climbing into a T-shirt that was hanging from the back of a chair, any awkwardness entirely swept aside by her anger.

  ‘Harry Jones lives here,’ the DI declared, a trace of uncertainty in his voice. His last bust had got entirely the wrong address and left him drowning in paperwork for a month.

  ‘This is my apartment,’ Jemma spat in return.

  ‘But . . . he lives here.’

  ‘So what?’

  He waved his warrant card at her. ‘So we’re going to look around.’

  ‘You got a search warrant?’

  ‘Don’t need one.’

  ‘I’ve got cockroaches with better manners than you.’

  ‘We tried to call.’

  ‘You didn’t even ring the bloody bell!’

  ‘The Police and Criminal Evidence Act allows us to search the premises of an arrested person.’

  ‘Arrested?’ The flame inside Jemma began to flicker in uncertainty. The DI held out a sheet of paper spelling out her rights but she ignored it. ‘What’s he done now?’ she asked, sinking back into her chair.

  ‘Mr Jones has been arrested on suspicion of murder.’

  And the flame was gone. ‘Murder? You can’t be serious. Who?’

  ‘A female officer of the Bermuda Police Force. Delicious Hope. An inspector. You know her, by any chance?’

  ‘I need to go to the bathroom.’

  ‘Not until we’ve checked it.’ The DI nodded to his colleagues and seconds later she could hear the banging of bathroom cupboards and the rattling of bottles and containers. The cistern lid was lifted, the system flushed, the rubbish bin rifled. Through the open door she watched them poking through her box of tampons.

  They moved to the bedroom, where they pulled back the duvet, examined the sheets for God knew what, poked around in the cupboards, took some of Harry’s clothes and all the dirty linen, including her own. When one of the uniformed policemen pulled at the top drawer in the chest it slid straight out and emptied her underwear over his shoes. He retrieved it with a glance of embarrassment and apology.

  They spent a lot of time in the spare bedroom, which was used as an office. They took the computer hard drive, his laptop, her laptop, too, despite her protests. ‘That’s mine.’

  ‘Not for the moment it’s not.’

  An exhibits officer made a record of everything.

  Then they asked for her mobile phone. She found it in the bottom of her bag and handed it across. It was switched off, had been all day, and perhaps that had been a mistake. She always switched it off while at school, then after work she’d shared a glass of wine with a girlfriend as she tried to make sense of the emotional jumble of her life. Hadn’t wanted distractions from anyone, and particularly Harry.

  A constable switched the phone on. ‘No sign of any details for Inspector Hope, Guv,’ he announced, scanning the records. ‘But there’s voicemail.’ Without asking permission he played the messages over the speaker. Three were from Theo van Buren, asking her to call him urgently. One was a lengthy monologue from her mother complaining about a vet’s bill for the cat. A message from the police proving they had tried to call. And there was Steve’s voice, low, soft, a little cautious, thanking her for the previous night, his ingratiating tone leaving little doubt as to what he was grateful for and expressing the hope they could do it all again. ‘Again. And again!’ he said, chuckling as he rang off.

  It left an uncomfortable silence in the room.

  ‘Erm, Mr Jones, is he going through any emotional turmoil, perhaps?’ the DI asked.

  If eyes threw spears he knew he’d have been pinned halfway up the wall and bleeding through his socks. She said nothing.

  After they had left, carrying computers and clothes and other pieces in plastic evidence bags, Jemma was left to sit, alone, a sweat of fury trickling beneath her shoulder blades and down her spine. She felt humiliated but, even more than that, she felt violated. By the police. Because of Harry. She wondered if she could ever again feel clean in this apartment, or in their relationship. ‘Why, Harry? Why?’ she muttered as she tore off her T-shirt and headed for the shower.

  Alcatraz must have been more fun than this, he thought, when he stirred the following morning, stiff from a night of restlessness on an inadequate mattress covered in heavy-duty plastic. The custody cell at Charing Cross was totally charmless, stripped of any comforts. Four solid walls covered in scratches of graffiti, a bare and easily scrubbable floor, a high window and a concrete plinth just wide enough to take the plastic mattress. The door was steel and when it closed made the sound of a falling guillotine. Yet the cell seemed the least of his troubles. He hoped he wouldn’t be kept here long – Hughie Edwards would surely establish he couldn’t be involved – but the death of Delicious had left him twisting in agony. He was the reason she’d come to Britain, him and his father and Susannah Ranelagh. He liked her, they made sparks together, could have become lifelong friends in this life, let alone the next. Now she was dead. His fault.

  And he hadn’t seen Jemma in days, hadn’t talked with her in weeks. That was probably his fault, too. But where the hell had she been these last couple of nights? Staying over at a friend’s, punishing him, making him sweat, it was that sort of passion and unpredictability that he loved, but even so . . .

  Would he have had sex with Delicious if his phone hadn’t begun to ring? He’d never know, not now. But as he considered his own shortcomings he began to realize that his early release might not be as easy as he’d anticipated. If he’d had sex with her his DNA would’ve been all over the place, but even so it wouldn’t take Hughie’s men long to discover that he’d visited her hotel and spent some time in her room. Men in plaster casts tend to attract attention. And then there had been their long and final embrace. Her DNA over his clothes, with Hughie Edwards jumping to all the wrong conclusions. J
emma would jump to the wrong conclusion, too; damn it, in her current mood he might have to ask the DCI to keep him locked up for his own protection.

  He soon found out he was right. Wrong conclusions were piling up so high he’d need a rope and oxygen to climb over them.

  ‘OK, Harry, let’s go over your story one more time, shall we?’ Edwards said as a little later they gathered once again in the interview room, van Buren in attendance. He opened a blue case file in front of him and made a point of studying it, even though he knew precisely what it said. He had to make the suspect believe he knew the answers. He looked up with grey, enquiring eyes that were red at the rims with doubt. ‘Let’s start with this, shall we? The victim’s DNA all over your clothes.’ He threw an evidence bag onto the table between them. It was Harry’s shirt. ‘Why don’t we have a go at explaining that?’

  ‘She was just saying goodbye.’

  ‘You weren’t shaking her hand, that’s for certain. Forensics reckon it was more of a clinch, a close encounter of the old-fashioned kind. You make a habit of kissing police inspectors, do you?’

  ‘In your case I’ll make an exception.’

  ‘Detective Chief Inspector,’ Edwards reminded him pointedly, as though it might give him some advantage. ‘You spent some time in her room. The hotel receptionist remembers you going up there and then leaving, roughly an hour later. He was very sure it was you.’

  ‘Give Pablo my best when you next see him.’

  ‘You getting your leg over, were you?’

  ‘Chief Inspector,’ van Buren interrupted, ‘you must have pathology reports by now. Is there any evidence that Inspector Hope and my client had engaged in any form of sex?’

  Edwards sucked his teeth. ‘Not that we can confirm. Yet.’

  ‘And do you have any evidence that my client or anyone else in a plaster cast and sling was at the scene where the inspector died?’

  The DCI stopped sucking his teeth and instead chewed his cheek. ‘We’re still pursuing our enquiries. There was a lot of people in the park that afternoon.’