A Ghost at the Door

by Michael Dobbs

  ‘Tell me, Abby, was there any particular time of year he came back home?’ Harry asked, an edge to his voice.

  ‘Yes, always in the autumn.’

  ‘October?’

  ‘That’s right. September–October. Then sod off before the snow, that’s what he used to say. Before they caught up with him again.’

  ‘So your father changed his life after the attack?’

  ‘Completely.’

  ‘Can you remember exactly when that was?’

  ‘As I said, around ten years ago. No, perhaps a little more. I was still in my twenties.’

  ‘Might it have been 2001?’

  ‘No, no, not then. It was the autumn of the following year, 2002. I’m pretty sure of that,’ she said, nibbling at her thumb as she concentrated. ‘But we were all getting paranoid then, weren’t we? After 9/11, just before the Iraq war.’

  ‘And after that you saw him . . .?’

  ‘Once a year. He’d send me another postcard, arrange a meeting place, here, or sometimes at a Cuban restaurant around the corner. Only a couple of hours, it was never more than that. But, you know, he was always excited to see me, always apologizing for screwing up.’

  The memories were getting to her; her lip trembled as Jemma squeezed her hand.

  ‘And the last time, Abby?’ Harry pressed. ‘I’m sorry, but we have to know.’

  She hesitated, reached inside her bag and produced a roll of kitchen towel. She tore off a sheet and began dabbing at her nose. ‘At that table in the corner right there. Said he was working on a new book that was going to be the most important he’d ever written.’

  ‘About who, what?’

  ‘That’s the scary thing: he said it was about himself. That it was time for the full story to come out.’

  ‘And when was that?’

  ‘The third of October last year. Then he went missing. I knew something had happened, you see, because the postcards stopped. I waited a few weeks before I went to the police but they didn’t seem very interested, said there was no evidence he was still in the country, that he could have left on a ferry or something. He often did that.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I pressed, of course, insisted they look, but he had no registered address, no car, no bank account, hadn’t paid tax in Britain for years. I tried to explain but the policeman just kept sucking his pencil and shuffling papers around in his file. He said Dad had no real link with this country any more, so I said, “What about me?” He said a daughter he saw only once a year wasn’t much of a link. I felt so . . . humiliated.’

  A flush of emotion had risen from her chest and spread around her neck. Jemma squeezed her hand some more. Harry fiddled with an unused stick of sugar.

  ‘So do you think you can help me, Mr Jones?’ Abby said, giving her nose a defiant final wipe.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  She shook her head bitterly.

  ‘But I’ll try.’

  Her eyes came up, in despair, in hope.

  ‘Somehow it’s all linked to this photo,’ he said. ‘I think they met up every year. In October. Old friends who had a secret that kept drawing them together. Very successful friends, too – an international businessman, a wealthy single woman in Bermuda, a powerful official in Brussels, your father the biographer of the famous, my father the buccaneer, and even a bishop. Then something went wrong. This woman’ – he began tapping the photo – ‘Christine Leclerc, dies in a plane crash. That was in 2000. Then the following year this man, al-Masri, was murdered. My father died of a heart attack. Soon after that your father was beaten up, perhaps in an attempt to murder him, too. All around the same time. Then a few months ago your father went missing and this woman, Susannah Ranelagh, she’s gone missing, too.’ He looked directly at Abby, willing her to be strong. ‘The police believe she may have been murdered.’

  Abby let forth a soft moan but she didn’t break down. ‘My father isn’t missing. He’s dead. I know that. I think you know it, too.’

  ‘What makes you so sure, Abby?’

  ‘Thirty years of postcards. Every month from every corner of the world, even one time when he was in the hospital he got a nurse to write it. He would have sent me a postcard even if he’d been nailed to a cross. I think he was carrying too much guilt not to.’

  ‘Too much love, Abby,’ Jemma prompted.

  Abby nodded, grateful. ‘And now, nothing. I’m not going to find my father, I know that. But I would like to find the truth.’ A change had come over Abby. Any sign of vulnerability had gone and in its place was heat and determination. ‘That stupid policeman asked me why it mattered so much. “Your father spent less than a day with you in a decade,” he said. Idiot. He was my father!’

  ‘I understand, Abby,’ Harry said, very softly.

  They shared something unspoken between them and for a heartbeat Jemma felt a scratch of jealousy, cut out of the circle. ‘We somehow need to find out where he was living,’ she said.

  ‘The police reckon he must have been renting a place, informally. Well, he did everything cash-in-hand. Paid no council tax, didn’t appear on any electoral register. Probably rented a car the same way when he needed one.’

  ‘The postcards.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Did you keep any?’

  ‘But I kept them all,’ she replied, leaning down to her bag and hoisting it onto her lap. ‘All three hundred and fifty-seven of them.’ She reached inside and produced a shoebox, its lid secured with a leather strap. ‘My father’s life – in a stupid shoebox.’ She undid the strap and lifted off the lid to reveal cards, bound with a strand of red wool for every year, in a neat row. Harry looked on wistfully – it was his turn to feel a scratch. All those postcards and letters from his own father that he’d thrown away with the rubbish, some of them unread. Thoughts offered, only to be discarded, memories lost. Perhaps if he’d kept them he would have understood them better now.

  ‘May we look?’

  ‘Yes, please,’ she said. ‘I want to share them with someone who believes.’

  Carefully, respectfully, both he and Jemma unwrapped the woollen ties, a year at a time. Harry concentrated on the years since 2002, the year of the beating, and in particular the months Findlay had been in the country. And, like his father’s passport, the postcards gave up their story. Most were scenes of coastlines and seaside towns. Chesil Beach. The Fossil Cliffs of West Bay. Two from Abbotsbury with the swans. One of the Cerne Abbas giant with the huge phallus cut from the chalk. Another three from Dorchester, Weymouth, and Burton Bradstock. From other places, too, but a pattern was emerging. He pushed aside their mugs to clear space, then laid a selection of the cards on the undersized table. The two women crowded round; he could feel Jemma’s shoulder digging into his, the closest they’d been since – since too long. He flipped open his iPad and pulled up a map of a stretch of coastline, with an endless beach of shingle and pebbles rounded by the rocking of waves that created a lagoon stretching from Portland Spit almost to West Bay. Francis Drake had known this place, sheltered his ships here. Now Harry began pointing silently to the names of the towns and villages. They were all there, from the postcards. Every one of them.

  ‘West Dorset.’ The words came almost at a whisper. And even as he spoke them the station loudspeakers burst into life to announce that the direct service from Waterloo to Weymouth would be departing from Platform Four in fifteen minutes.

  ‘It’s still a pretty big area,’ Abby said, not daring to raise her hopes too high.

  ‘Thirty miles, thereabouts.’

  ‘But sea. I’m sure he’d be by the sea, somewhere he could see it. Not inland.’

  ‘Which means . . .’ – Harry wiped his fingers across the screen to enlarge the map – ‘somewhere between here and the shoreline.’ His finger ran along a coastal road, the B3157, that stretched west from Weymouth and passed through Abbotsbury and Burton Bradstock, hugging the coastline in places, veering away from it at others.

  ‘Any
family connection?’ Harry asked.

  ‘Not that I know of.’

  ‘Then we’d better go look.’

  ‘I’ll take some time off from my job,’ Abby pronounced.

  ‘No, Abby.’

  Harry contradicted her, perhaps a touch too firmly, and suddenly Abby went cold. She knew this wasn’t to be the stuff of happy endings, yet she couldn’t avoid whatever was waiting for them out there. ‘He’s my father, Harry.’

  Harry hesitated, then nodded slowly in acceptance. ‘Of course.’ He turned to Jemma. ‘You, too? I can’t drive all the way there, not with this.’ He waved his cast.

  ‘It’s coming off in a few days, so you said,’ Jemma objected.

  ‘They also said it would need weeks of physio.’

  Jemma found their eyes on her. What choice did she have? Damn you, Harry!

  ‘Thanks, Jemma,’ Abby said, giving her a feminine look of understanding and encouragement. ‘But, tell me, who are the other two in the photo?’ She laid it on top of the postcards and leaned forward to interrogate it.

  ‘Good question,’ Harry replied before Jemma had time to change her mind. ‘I don’t know the woman, she’s a complete mystery. Can’t find anyone who says they remember her. But the man you’re crushing beneath your forefinger is the former Bishop of Burton. His name’s Randall Wickham.’

  ‘And is he . . .?’

  ‘Dead? No. But he’s gone missing, too, in a manner of speaking. Gone into hiding, really. All of a sudden he’s not returning my messages.’

  ‘Is that important? Is he involved in all this?’

  ‘Oh, yes, I think he is. Right up to his spotless clerical collar,’ Harry said, tugging at the stick of sugar so hard that it suddenly burst and sent white granules scattering across the table.

  At first the murder of Inspector Hope had seemed like a good break for Hughie Edwards. A pity, of course. Wouldn’t wish that on anyone, least of all a professional colleague, but Edwards’s career had spanned many years and even more murders. Business was business. And getting a result would be just what he needed to snatch that late promotion to superintendent he was after. The ‘dash for cash’, they called it. He wouldn’t get another go, was fast running out of years, and had failed the process twice already. His last chance. So a body in the park within sight of Downing Street was a lucky break.

  It had been something of a soft landing, so far as murders went, because it had been some time before they’d been able to confirm it was foul play; up to that point it had simply been a stray body, and a foreign one at that. Media interest had drained into the dry summer soil. There were no hassling reporters, no excitable press conferences. Hughie Edwards was in control of this one. Yet with every day that passed without progress his authority was slipping away. The stiff dicks that waved above his head were beginning to ask questions. It was, after all, a murder, and of a fellow police officer. Where are we on this one, Hughie? What forms have been filled, what boxes ticked?

  The answer was that he was getting nowhere. What had started out as an opportunity was now beginning to undermine him, to bugger up his prospects of promotion. So he went for one of his long walks.

  Hughie Edwards walked because he was Welsh, because it helped him wear off two pints too many, and because he was an essentially lonesome type, most comfortable in the company of his grudges. He burned a little leather and found himself on the Jubilee footbridge spanning the Thames between Charing Cross and the South Bank. There was still plenty of foot traffic even at this late hour as people drifted away from the Festival Hall arts complex. A performance of Look Back in Anger had been playing at the National. Fitted Hughie’s mood. A couple of young tarts had smiled at him as he’d passed, East European, novices, unsure of the rules of engagement in this foreign city. He ignored them; instead, he stood in the middle of the bridge, thinking of Delicious, smoking a cigarette, his dark thoughts swirling with the tide.

  He knew it was Harry. Had to be. Four weeks on and still not a whisper of another suspect. The murder had had to be planned, which meant a link to Bermuda, and, despite an avalanche of e-mails and faxes trying to pin down any Bermudan with a British connection who might have a reason for wanting Delicious dead, not a single name had stood up to even the gentlest of testing. Which left Harry. A former soldier trained for violence whose life had suddenly been tipped over the edge and into the slurry pit that waited for failed politicians. That must have hurt, left him in all kinds of emotional turmoil – the profilers would have a field day with that – yet Harry had proved to be a canny bastard and now his superiors were growing impatient. You didn’t win your super’s spurs on unsolved cases. Edwards needed a name. He needed Harry.

  He took a long draw on his cigarette and let the sultry air carry the smoke away. He took pride in being a decent cop, wouldn’t fit Harry up, not on a charge of murder; but, precisely because it was so serious, it made it all the more important to get a result and, in Edwards’s experience, reading the rule book never got you out of the sodding library. They’d get a break in the case eventually – they almost always did – but eventually was no bloody good to Edwards. Eventually sucked; eventually he would be out of the force and on his uppers. The case – Harry – needed a bit of a shaking, given a nudge in the right direction.

  He took a last pull on his cigarette and watched the glowing butt spiral down into the flowing darkness below. He glanced round, almost nervously as if someone might be reading his thoughts, but there was no one. Even the hookers had gone. No, he was going to be all right, get Harry Jones sorted, banded and de-bollocked like a day-old lamb with a sprig of rosemary and the roasting tray already waiting. Harry was going to go down. He’d bet his super’s pension on it.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Albany was one of the most prestigious yet peculiar addresses in central London. Built in the late eighteenth century for the first Viscount Melbourne, it was later converted into a series of ‘sets’ or apartments for eminent bachelors. One of them was Lord Byron, the poet-politician who proceeded to behave outrageously with Melbourne’s daughter-in-law, Lady Caroline Lamb. What made the liaison all the more disreputable was the fact that she was married to the second Viscount Melbourne, one of Queen Victoria’s favourite prime ministers. Discretion required disguise, and Lady Caroline was smuggled into the strictly all-male preserve of Albany dressed as a page boy.

  In the two centuries since, the residents’ behaviour may have been toned down and the rules relaxed a little, but Albany is still a socially exclusive enclave tucked away behind the urban bustle of Piccadilly from which children, pets and unwanted visitors are banned. Which presented Harry with a problem. He knew this was where Randall Wickham lived – thirty seconds interrogating Helen’s computer had told him as much – and he also knew the bishop had just arrived home because he’d seen him climbing out from his taxi. But, by the time Harry had tumbled from his seat in the window of the coffee house from where he was keeping watch, the bishop had disappeared inside. The pillared entrance was guarded by two porters in uniform whose jobs depended on maintaining the sanctity of the place. Harry strode hastily up the steps. A porter stood at the top, barring his way.

  ‘Afternoon, sir,’ he said. ‘Can I help you?’

  Harry produced his wallet from his inside pocket and brandished it at the porter. ‘I’ve just been having lunch with Bishop Randall,’ he explained, ‘been trying to catch up with him. He left his wallet behind.’

  ‘Thank you, sir, I’ll make sure he gets it,’ the porter replied, stretching out his hand.

  ‘If you don’t mind, I think I ought to hand it over in person. I know he’s only just beaten me here. Would you mind calling up and telling him I’m on my way?’

  Without waiting for an answer and with an air of social authority, Harry passed by, grateful that despite the heat he’d chosen to put on a well-tailored jacket that morning. He could sense the porter’s indecision but Harry was already heading up the stairs. As he reached the top he
could hear the porter muttering into his internal phone.

  The bishop lived in the main block of Albany, its oldest part, and Harry was surprised how simple and almost institutional the common parts were, with a few doors coming off the landings around a large and rather dark central stairwell. He knew which one was the bishop’s because, even as Harry approached, it was already open. The bishop was standing in the doorway, clad in a smoking jacket. From several yards away Harry could see the storm of surprise and apprehension that was sweeping across his face. The thin fingers were white upon the door, moist pink lips moved, then froze, as Wickham debated whether to open the door wider or slam it in Harry’s face.

  ‘Harry, my dear friend, what a surprise. What brings you here?’ The lips split in a tight smile while the eyes danced with caution. ‘The porter was suggesting something about a lost wallet?’

  And slowly, as if on rusted hinges, the door was opened a few further inches.

  ‘Wallet? I’ve no idea what he was talking about. I just saw you in the street and chased after you. I hope you don’t mind, just wanted to say hello. I’ve got some more news about your friends from Oxford. I wonder, do you have time for a cup of tea?’

  The cleric’s certainties in life tended to be of an eternal nature; he didn’t have much practice at inventing excuses on the spot. ‘Do come in,’ he found himself saying.

  Harry found himself in a high-ceilinged hall. The contrast with the bland hallway outside couldn’t have been more stark. The walls were dressed in rich silk wallpaper and an ornate bureau stood against one wall. Across from it, in a gilded frame, a Pre-Raphaelite scene of the Crucifixion stared down at him. A staircase led up to a further floor; other paintings lined its walls. Harry didn’t have time to take in more as he was ushered into an inner room that seemed womblike. It had no windows and was lined with bookcases while every spare section of wall was covered in oils and water-colours. A desk faced the door; behind it was a white marble fireplace with its mantelpiece so crowded with elegant objects and invitations they threatened to push each other off the top.