A Ghost at the Door

by Michael Dobbs

  ‘On your wall.’

  ‘Yes, and of greater value with every passing year. Ever since that day I’ve been rescuing special works, putting them to one side for safekeeping. I’m no more than their custodian. When I die every one of them will go to the Church.’

  ‘May your God forgive you.’

  ‘He will! He understands.’

  ‘He understands about the boys, does he? Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. He sure screwed up on that one, didn’t he?’

  ‘Stop!’ Wickham struck the altar with his palm, gasping for breath and excuse. His head sagged, but when it came up again crimson spots of defiance were burning on his cheeks. ‘There may have been moments in my private life, times when I’ve been totally exhausted by my work, made vulnerable, that I’ve fallen prey to . . . distraction.’

  ‘You call young boys distraction?’

  ‘I have done nothing – nothing! – that is unlawful. Not a single one was below the age of consent.’ The lips were once again moist as they lied. ‘Many were just friends . . .’

  ‘I’m sure the archbishop would understand. Not so sure about the Daily Mail.’

  ‘If I hadn’t devoted my life to the Church I would be wealthy, I would be honoured and no one would give a damn about the boys.’

  Boys. Harry noted the word the bishop had used and the admission it contained. ‘Is that why you asked to see me, Bishop? To hear your confession?’

  ‘In a manner of speaking.’ He was calmer now. ‘I want to talk about your father.’

  Jemma scolded herself. She’d been determined that she would have nothing to do with Harry’s bloody father, had washed her hands of the matter, almost of Harry, too, yet, despite herself, she found that questions about Johnnie and the Aunt Emmas kept wriggling their way into her mind. A matter had begun with a meaningless black-and-white photograph but now all those faces had transformed into people who were very real, and very dead, except for the bishop. And perhaps the mysterious woman with the thin face and those nervous, aching eyes, like a sparrow. It was inconceivable to Jemma that such a fragile bird could be responsible for such malevolence as was unfolding, yet there could be no doubt she was part of the secret.

  Parliament Square. Once more stuck in traffic as it snaked past the honey-coloured palace with its soaring clock tower. As she waited for the lights to change she was distracted, temporarily blinded as a group of tourists snatched their moment in front of Big Ben and their cameras flashed, each taking it in turn behind the lens to capture the moment. Mrs Butt’s face had been a picture, too, as she and Harry had come downstairs to join Abby at the breakfast table. She had deliberately overcooked the eggs and left the toast like a doormat, banging their plates down in disapproval. As her thoughts wandered, Jemma was brought back to the moment by the black cab that had been following her around the square and was now blowing its horn in impatience. She slipped the gear and was soon driving along the bank of the river once again, yet still she couldn’t rid herself of the question: the woman in the photo, who the hell was she?

  Suddenly she wrenched at the wheel and pulled over, violently, resulting in another chorus of objection from the black cab. The driver waved a finger of reproach and mouthed something rude; in return she blew him a kiss of excitement. They’d been stupidly blind, missed the point. The woman didn’t matter after all, or not that much. Both she and Harry had been staring at the bloody obvious yet managed to overlook it all this time. As the taxi drew away she glanced at the clock. Harry would still surely be with the bishop. She couldn’t call, disturb him, but he would need to know. Her thumbs were shaking with excitement as she texted him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  ‘I want to show you something, Harry,’ Wickham said. ‘Come with me.’ The priest led the way from the light of the stage on which the altar sat to a doorway in a darkened corner, then through a door of studded oak that Harry guessed was perhaps salvaged from an era even earlier than Wren. It led to a circular stone staircase, narrow, dark, tight, whose treads were marked by several centuries of wear. Both men took care as they made their way upwards. The stairs became dustier, marked by pigeons and crumbs of ancient masonry; the bishop paused for breath as they reached the level of the bell hanging in its cradle of wooden beams, then pushed on. Harry had lost count of the number of steps by the time they came to a door; the bishop tugged, struggling to open it until it came free with a sharp scraping noise and he stepped out onto the narrow roof of the bell tower. The atmosphere inside the old church had been cool; now the humidity of the summer’s night washed around them. For a moment Harry was mesmerized by the light pouring from the buildings that crowded in on all sides. Most were mercantile, many of them banks, but in the distance he could see the cupola of St Paul’s and, in the darkness between, the outline of the bronzed figure of Lady Justice that hovered above the Old Bailey. In front of him at the edge of the roof was an old stone parapet. It was low. Like the staircase behind, it had been built for an age of smaller souls.

  The bishop waved an arm. ‘From here you can see everything, the entire machinery of civilization,’ he began. ‘The towers of commerce and the temples of the soul.’

  ‘God and greed. Greed seems to be winning.’

  ‘You’re so very like your father,’ Wickham said, unamused. ‘Always a word wiser than anyone else. He’d argue the wings off an angel – if ever he stumbled over one.’

  ‘I wish you luck, too.’

  ‘The point I’m trying to make,’ the bishop said testily, ‘is that these things are what life is about. Body and spirit. Sometimes in harmony when we get it right, other times at each other’s throat, but we’ve always needed them both. Two thousand years ago there were slaughterhouses on the banks of the Walbrook. Next to them, Roman soldiers built a temple dedicated to Mithras. Why? So they could bathe in warm bull’s blood while they paid homage. It’s all gone now, of course, the slaughterhouses, the temple, but in a sense so little has changed. In their place we have the towers of the Lord and of Mammon. Still side by side, and sometimes hand in hand.’

  ‘What happened to the meek inheriting the earth?’

  ‘A little naïve, Harry, I’m surprised at you. Your father would never have felt that way. No, not Johnnie.’ He steepled his fingers at his lips, as though in prayer. ‘He used to talk about you, you know.’

  ‘Me?’ Harry couldn’t hide his surprise; suddenly he was on the back foot.

  ‘But of course. He was very proud of you.’

  Harry wasn’t sure what to say, so he said nothing, waiting.

  ‘Your father and I were friends for many years, Harry.’

  ‘The Aunt Emmas.’

  ‘Yes, and as you rightly suspected we continued to gather together, every year at the start of the Michaelmas term.’

  ‘To collaborate.’

  ‘An ugly word. It began as youthful arrogance. We were better than the rest, we thought, each of us bringing our individual perspectives and skills, which we could exploit better together than alone. It started as fun, nothing more, yet over the years it became serious. Almost too serious.’

  ‘Insider trading.’

  ‘We never deliberately conspired. We exchanged views, experiences, as friends, and as we made progress along our chosen career paths those experiences became more valuable.’

  ‘Even Findlay Francis? He was a writer.’

  ‘Poor Finn never made much money out of the rest of us, that wasn’t his interest, but he was always so keen to tell the story of what he’d discovered from those rich and powerful figures he was writing about. He preferred the telling to the taking, God rest his soul.’

  ‘And my father?’

  Wickham recognized the anxiety in Harry’s voice and rejoiced. He’d got Harry to where he wanted. He had the advantage; now he needed to make sure. ‘Yes, Johnnie turned up every year, without fail. And every year he’d bring with him tales of what you’d been up to.’

  ‘But we scarcely talked. A
lmost never met.’

  ‘He followed your career in the Army as best he could. You kept getting mentions in despatches, promotions, medals, accolades. Then you became a politician.’

  ‘The year before he died . . .’

  ‘By then you were scarcely ever out of the news. And Johnnie brought every scrap of it to us.’

  ‘But he never had any time for me.’

  ‘He wrote to you, that’s what he said. It was you who turned your back on him.’

  ‘No, no, he . . .’ But the half-formed excuse disappeared within a fog of confusion. Suddenly Harry began to understand how skilful the bishop was in spotting and exploiting vulnerabilities, in creating distractions in a way that had kept him out of reach all these years. Harry had hoped that unravelling the truth about his father would settle things, flush out the pain that had been lurking deep inside ever since he was a boy. He’d thought it would enable him to purge the memory of his father’s ghost, to move on. Instead, Johnnie was coming back to haunt him.

  Friday night. No parking restrictions. Jemma stopped a little way down Walbrook, keeping the front of St Stephen’s in view, and waited, windows open, the heat of the city trickling down the nape of her neck. As she sat behind the wheel of the old Volvo she wondered at the ridiculous way in which women made up their minds. A few nights earlier she’d been driving around in Steve’s car. It was almost new, bright red, air-conditioned, fun – and, yes, even a little flash, and smelled of an air freshener that claimed it was natural pine and dangled from the driver’s mirror. Harry’s old Volvo, on the other hand, was an entirely different world. Old leather, the slightest tang of oil and a heavy, complex sweetness that reminded her of freshly cracked walnuts. There were other contrasts, of course. He was more than a dozen years older and her mother definitely didn’t approve of that, or him, or the fact that he was sharing a bed with her daughter. Perfect.

  ‘Who killed Findlay Francis?’ Harry asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Wickham replied.

  ‘And Susannah Ranelagh?’

  ‘Is she dead? I suppose she is. Sweet, lonely Susannah.’

  ‘And the others? Why did they all die?’

  The shadows hid the bishop’s eyes, made his face appear shrunken, skull-like. His voice had an air of resignation. ‘I can’t say. Sometimes God appears to sleep. I hope he does, for my sake.’

  The last words came out as a sigh, so soft that Harry scarcely caught them. It sounded like an admission of guilt. In his pocket he was vaguely aware of a tingling sensation from his phone that told him he had a new message. He ignored it.

  ‘Downstairs, Harry, at the altar, I was praying for us both.’

  ‘I don’t need your prayers, Bishop, just the truth. Tell me. What happened to my father? Did he really die of a heart attack?’

  ‘Why do you doubt it?’

  ‘Because I’m beginning to doubt everything I’ve ever been told about him.’

  Chief Inspector Edwards stared at the tracker icon, making certain. There was no doubt. It had come to a halt, marking a spot in the heart of the City. He felt a flush of excitement. The bait had been taken; the float at the end of the line tugged beneath the surface. Time to strike.

  ‘Staunton?’

  ‘Yes, Guv?’ the sergeant responded from his desk a few feet away.

  ‘Drop whatever it is you’re wasting your time on and bring round the car. You and me, we’re going to take ourselves for a little drive.’

  Wickham had stepped out from the shadows of the church tower and was leaning on the low parapet, looking out across the spectacular skyscape. Harry came to join him, to make sure he heard every word.

  ‘I know nothing of your father’s death, Harry,’ the bishop said. ‘I can only tell you how he lived. Most men have a time in their lives when they struggle with their conscience, but Johnnie . . .’ Wickham waved his hand towards the forest of towers that surrounded them. ‘You talk about that gap between God and greed, but Johnnie never had any doubts about which side he pitched his tent. He wasn’t like the rest of the Aunt Emmas. While we got together to share, not just what we knew but what was important to each of us, as friends, as we’d always done, Johnnie somehow changed. He seemed only to want to use us, to grab every plate that was put upon the table. Finn put it bluntly, in that way he had with words. Johnnie was raping our minds. We were supposed to be his friends.’

  Harry flinched, his hands scraping in shame along the rough stonework.

  ‘In our different ways the rest of us gave, to each other and often to those beyond. I’m proud of what I’ve done for the Church and for many other causes, but Johnnie – he only took. Left nothing of value behind. And yet you come here with your cheap morality, a man whose life has been built on what his father took from others. How dare you?’ The words were spoken softly and in accusation.

  The bishop took a step or two backwards, as though he found Harry’s company repellent. Harry was left leaning on the balustrade, breathing heavily as confusion and guilt tumbled through his mind. God, it hurt. He knew now that he’d always wanted to find something in his father he could admire, some spark of love he could revive, but that was all gone. He’d been such a fool. He’d kicked the lid off the coffin, shaken the dead, and now his father’s ghost had come back to torment him.

  Far down below in the street, out of reach, was a world of ordinary people. The wail of a Friday-evening siren floated up; to Harry it was the sound of his father’s mockery. Damn you, Johnnie, in whatever corner of hell you’re hiding.

  It was at that moment, lost in misery, that he heard a scuffling noise behind him. Harry turned, but by then it was too late.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Harry had only half-turned when the bishop hit him. Wickham had thrown himself at Harry using the full weight of his elderly body. Taken unawares, off-balance, Harry could feel himself toppling over the balustrade. There was no time for fear, only instinct. As on other occasions in his turbulent life when he’d been about to die, time slowed, every fraction stretched out so that he knew he was falling, his senses tumbling, screaming at him to save himself, but he couldn’t. As he looked down he could see only pavement, a hundred feet below, where he was going to die.

  His good hand clawed at the darkness, desperate for something to hold, but found only the bishop’s cassock. His fingers closed around it, for dear life but too late. He succeeded in doing no more than dragging Wickham after him.

  The bishop’s momentum spun Harry around and together they toppled over the weathered stone rail. That was when the cast on Harry’s broken arm snagged on the top of the balustrade, like a grappling iron. Suddenly both his own weight and that of the falling bishop were ripping at Harry’s shoulder. He could feel something tearing inside it; a fire exploded that instantly caught hold in the elbow joint, too. Harry cried out in pain. Without the rigid, unyielding cast he would have been forced to let go but instead he was left dangling, in darkness, in agony. Beneath him he could feel the bishop scrabbling for purchase on his other arm yet his fingers were old and frail; it was only Harry’s reflex grip that prevented him from falling.

  The shoulder joint was being torn from its socket as though he were being racked by some medieval inquisition. He bent his neck, found Wickham, face twisted in horror.

  ‘Help me! For God’s sake, help me!’ the bishop cried. His fingers were slipping on Harry’s arm, his feet kicking frenziedly at thin air. One of his shoes went spiralling down to the street below. It seemed a long time in falling.

  ‘I beg you, Harry,’ the bishop whimpered.

  Every tendon and muscle, every corner in every joint of Harry’s arm was screaming. The cast was slipping, losing its purchase on the stonework as the bishop fought. Wickham reached up, in despair, clawing, his nails leaving dreadful gouge marks in Harry’s skin as they slipped further down his arm. At the last they closed around the watchstrap. Harry’s own grip was failing, the cloth of the bishop’s cassock too fine, too smooth. A button bur
st, then another; the bishop gave a jerk, dropped a few further terrifying inches.

  Dread had frozen every sense in Randall Wickham. He stopped thrashing, hung helplessly in the air. Every ounce of willpower was directed towards Harry. Their eyes locked, reading each other’s thoughts, their fears.

  ‘In the name of God,’ the bishop begged.

  ‘I think,’ Harry whispered slowly, ‘we’ll let your God sort this one out, shall we?’

  Then he opened his hand.

  Randall Wickham screamed as he fell, his fear echoing back from every wall, until the moment he hit the pavement.

  Edwards never made it as far as the Volvo. As Sergeant Staunton turned their car from the ancient thoroughfare of Poultry into Walbrook they discovered a disturbance. A group of passers-by was gathered in a huddle at the base of the church tower. As they drew closer they could see one woman turn away and begin to scream, while a man was bent double while throwing up in the gutter. Others were taking photos, the flashes of their camera phones giving a garish, disconcerting light to the scene. A vivid purple stain was stretched out on the pavement.

  ‘Stop here, Staunton, I need a closer look.’ The huddle of onlookers was already becoming a crowd and as he pushed through them he saw what had drawn them. At that same moment he saw Harry stumbling from the church.

  ‘Christmas in July,’ he whispered to himself before calling for assistance.

  Jemma heard the scream, saw the body falling from the tower, just a flash, almost a shadow, so quickly she couldn’t make out its shape. She heard the noise it made as it hit the pavement. At first she thought it was Harry and screamed, silently, through frozen vocal cords, until she saw that it was clad in purple clerical garb. Then, as a crowd began to gather around it, a different fear took hold. Another body, and as Harry had said, in rather more colourful language, coincidence was only for the feeble-minded. He was never going to dig his way out from under this one.