The Smile of a Ghost mw-7

by Phil Rickman

  ‘Oh, we know he’d heard something,’ Eirion said. ‘In fact, any day now you could open the Sun and find, like, “Villagers have been shocked by the violent love-affair between their woman vicar and a rock singer with a conviction for a sex offence.” Well, more guarded than that, obviously…’

  ‘He’s not kidding, Lol,’ Jane said, watching his eyes.

  ‘Jane, I didn’t tell him anything.’

  ‘Well, somebody did. Either he’s been sniffing around the village in his spare time, or somebody’s been feeding him sick gossip.’

  ‘All right.’ Lol told them about Gomer Parry and the small boy and the ten quid. ‘You’re actually saying this guy was behind that?’

  ‘We don’t know, to be honest,’ Jane said. ‘We think he’s got to be. But who’s behind him? What else did he ask you about?’

  ‘He went into the court case and what led up to it and the loony-bin years, all that. He knew about it already, and I just made sure he got it right. Told him it really wasn’t much of a story any more.’

  ‘Hmm,’ Jane said.

  ‘And the rest was mainly about the music. Was I putting all my bad experiences into songs, like “Heavy Medication Day”? Which was fair enough. He said it sounded like this Dr Gascoigne had done some unpleasant things to me. He was trying to find out what they were. I didn’t tell him.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘I don’t think so. If I think of anything else, I’ll call you on the mobile.’

  ‘Well, leave it switched on,’ Jane said.

  ‘OK.’ Lol paused in the doorway. ‘So Jack Fine really wasn’t doing an actual interview for Q? Or anything?’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘OK,’ Lol said.

  He walked across to the square to collect his Astra, a nobody again. Thinking that it was always harder for a nobody to defend himself, his loved ones, his reputation.

  When Lol had gone, Jane switched on the computer, thinking how wise it had been of her to persuade Mum to have an extra phone line installed.

  ‘Where do we start?’

  Eirion raised his eyes to the ceiling. Meaning Jane’s attic apartment where, last summer, she’d lost her virginity to him — not realizing that, despite all his man-of-the-world crap, he was simultaneously losing his to her. Never quite forgiven him for that.

  ‘Out of the question,’ Jane said.

  ‘I didn’t say anything.’

  ‘The way you were sitting said it all.’ Jane clicked into Internet Explorer. ‘What are we looking for? Like, has Lol really told us anything we didn’t already know?’

  It had become interesting when Fyneham had admitted that the new Evesham computer Jane had been threatening with extinction had been bought for him in return for helping one of his dad’s… hard to say if it was a friend or just a client. But the guy had wanted to know about Merrily and Lol, particularly Lol, which was bizarre.

  What he’d wanted to know, basically, as Jane had understood it, was like, well… dirt. Anything damaging. Lol and Mum? Someone wanted to damage Lol and Mum?

  Just then, unfortunately, Fyneham’s dad’s Alfa had pulled up outside. Back-up. So Fyneham had become braver. Presumably the old man was as bent as his son. So JD had gone back on his story, claiming he’d been, like, just saying that about this guy, to wind them up.

  Eirion pulled out a Parish Pump leaflet he’d picked up from a pile in the office suite. Jane at once snatched it and screwed it up.

  ‘Parish Pimp, more like.’

  ‘No!’ Eirion grabbed it back, smoothed it out. ‘I made some notes on this. Listed all the titles his dad publishes.’

  ‘Does that help us?’

  ‘Might do. What Hereford Council Can Do for You? Do we know any bent councillors your mum might have offended?’

  ‘Most councillors wind up bent after a few years. What else is on the list? I forget.’

  ‘Microlite Monthly? DigiCam!’

  ‘Anorak rags.’

  ‘I was saving the best one. The Clinical Therapist.’

  ‘You reckon?’

  ‘Google it,’ Eirion said.

  The Clinical Therapist. Biannual digest of new developments in clinical psychiatry aimed primarily at hospital-based psychiatrists and allied practitioners. Est. 1999. Lord Shipston. DClinPsych, MSc.

  ‘Not many cartoons, then,’ Eirion said.

  ‘Lol once told me, in one of his more embittered moments, that the majority of shrinks rise to the top by having nothing at all to do with people but just writing papers for dismal publications like this. I mean, Lord Shipston? How many neurotics has he ever had on the couch? Let’s go back and snatch Fyneham when he leaves the house.’

  ‘We’re supposed to be minding the phone. We’ll just have to sit here and amuse ourselves.’

  ‘Actually, Irene,’ Jane said, ‘I think I’m probably having a frigid day. Too much exposure to male greed, male dishonesty, immorality, hypocrisy — that kind of stuff.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Don’t you put your bloody Huw Edwards chapel face on, you’re no better. You told me you weren’t a virgin. You totally spoiled my first experience. All the time I’m thinking, Oh no, I’m going to be such a disappointment compared with all the others.’

  ‘What do you think I was feeling?’

  ‘I remember exactly what you were feeling, I just didn’t realize you’d never felt one before.’

  The phone rang. Jane snatched it.

  ‘She’s still not back?’

  ‘No, I’m sorry, Sophie.’

  ‘I see.’ Sophie still thought Jane should call her Mrs Hill. Too bad.

  ‘What did you want, exactly?’

  ‘I wanted to talk to her, Jane.’

  ‘Sophie,’ Jane said. ‘How old will I have to be before you recognize me as someone of mature intelligence and perception?’

  ‘In your case, Jane, although it’s possible I may live long enough to change my mind—’

  ‘Yeah, yeah… Look, can I sound you out about something, while you’re on? Eirion and me, we’ve been talking to this guy who was set up to interview Lol, maybe to find stuff out about him and Mum.’

  ‘Who’s this?’

  ‘Guy called J.D. Fyneham. His dad’s a magazine publisher. Fyneham does this… have you come across this Parish Pump thing, offers to revamp parish magazines?’

  ‘I have, actually,’ Sophie said. ‘Bryce Orford left some leaflets for me to hand out to—’

  ‘Who’s Bryce Orford?’

  ‘The Dean. What’s this about, again?’

  ‘Somebody’s trying to damage Lol and Mum, that’s the bottom line. I mean, you must know that’s happening.’

  ‘Yes, I believe it is. I just hope this isn’t one of your—’

  ‘This is absolutely on the level, Sophie, I swear on… on the grave of Lucy Devenish. And I think you know something, don’t you?’

  Jane held her breath, watching Eirion’s stony chapel face awaken into human interest.

  ‘All right, tell me everything,’ Sophie said.

  Jane had relented and, about twenty minutes later, she and Eirion were into some mild petting on the rug by the desk when Sophie called back.

  ‘That was, um, quick.’

  ‘Jane, I’m in the office now, and it’s very important that I talk to your mother.’

  ‘Well, Lol’s gone over to Ludlow now, and he’s got a phone, so we expect to be in contact soon.’

  ‘The best we can hope for, I suppose. Jane, you should know that I’m now treating you as a person of mature intelligence.’

  ‘Right…’ Jane had a hand under her top, repositioning her bra. She blushed. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I’ve had to come into the office after a call from the Bishop. Something’s happened, and the Bishop was in a quandary and, in the absence of Merrily, I’m afraid, he was forced to refer it to the Deliverance Panel. Telling me at the same time, of course, in the hope that the information would also reach Merrily.’


  ‘She rang,’ Jane remembered. ‘The Callaghan-Clarke woman.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘This morning. She thought the media might be after Mum. I forgot. So much was… Do you know what that was about?’

  ‘I think I do, but this is something else that’s just developed. Merrily probably knows about it already, which is why she hasn’t been in touch. Jane, I can hardly believe it.’

  Sophie’s tone indicating that she just had to talk to somebody or she’d go crazy.

  ‘What’s…?’ Jane raised her eyebrows at Eirion, who was on his feet, face full of questions.

  ‘It’s the castle again,’ Sophie said bleakly. ‘Another child.’

  PART FOUR

  Sam

  ‘If man does survive, does he produce ghosts? I think this could only be assumed if he retained his psyche-field.’

  T. C. Lethbridge, Ghost and Divining Rod (1963)

  ‘Rapping on the windows

  And crying through the locks…’

  Anon.

  41

  Big Bump

  When Merrily came hurrying onto Castle Square, the whole space seemed to be vibrating — duss, duss, duss — to the dampened thud of some Saturday busker’s bass drum, set up down by the deli.

  Duss, duss, duss: the sound of an execution day.

  She crossed the square and stood by the tourist office and looked around through the crowd.

  Bell… where the hell are you?

  The clarity had gone from the sky. Gauzy, mauvish clouds were smothering the sun, and there was no breeze to flutter the red and white pennants hanging between gables like a row of teeth set in bleeding gums.

  She’d been down to the bottom of Corve Street to fetch the Volvo, a parking penalty under one of the wipers. Turned the key seven times, and it kept failing to start — another sign of mortality to join the ticking behind the dash, the rattle under the chassis, the grinding on corners. She’d still been shaking the wheel in frustration when she found that it had somehow started, two wheels crashing down from the kerb.

  To charge up the battery or whatever, she’d driven through town, down by the side of the castle to the stooping community of Dinham with its twelfth-century chapel dedicated to murdered St Thomas, and then to the hissing River Teme — a vain search for the woman who wanted to fly like Marion. Back in the car park at the top of town, she’d paid for a full day, near enough, and then found a phone box to call Jane… engaged.

  Single-lane vehicles were threading around the square, but the main traffic was people, scurrying about like figures in a Brueghel. So many clothes now — T-shirts, sweatshirts, fleeces and hooded tops — reflecting, in their myriad colours, the outerwear of Merrie Englande. And so many people talking to one another — a sense of community you seldom saw anywhere else.

  Robbie Walsh would walk these streets in a state of near-ecstasy. He was happier than any child I ever saw. She felt she was inside Robbie again, seeing images of how things were, how they worked, the nuts and bolts of medieval life. Looking at now and feeling then, as if, in some mystical way, this might point her towards Bell.

  ‘Mrs Watkins!’

  A man was wading through the crowd towards her, a brown overall flapping around his knees like the uniforms of shopkeepers when she was a kid, his eyes glittering under the jutting shelf of his forehead. A prophet from a children’s Bible.

  Duss, duss, duss.

  ‘Mr Mayor.’

  ‘We told that boy to keep on playing.’ The Mayor nodded towards the busker, who also had a guitar and a harmonica, but it was the drumbeat that carried, like plodding boots, across the square. ‘Anything to make it seem like a normal Saturday.’

  ‘You haven’t seen Bell, have you?’

  ‘I don’t go looking for her, Mrs Watkins. Besides—’

  ‘You’ll have seen the papers, I suppose.’

  ‘Now, look, there was nothing I could do about that. I’ve had three radio stations on already this morning — that’s why I left the house. And now this. My God, Mrs Watkins, is there no end?’

  ‘About the petition,’ Merrily said. ‘I think it’s time you—’

  ‘Aren’t you going in?’ He stared down at her.

  ‘In where?’

  ‘You only just got here, or what?’

  ‘I… more or less, yes.’

  ‘You mean you don’t know about the girl?’

  Before Merrily could ask him what he meant, George Lackland had taken her by the elbow and was steering her towards the castle gate. Where, for the first time, she noticed that nobody was going in, which probably accounted for the excess of people on the square. The big gates were open, as if to let vehicles in and out, but the way was blocked by police, two men and a woman, George striding over to address them.

  ‘Where’s Steve Britton?’

  ‘Gone back in, Mr Lackland.’

  ‘Only, I got Mrs Watkins here, from the Bishop’s office.’

  The male cop’s expression said, So? Merrily saw that the gift shop, where visitors normally paid their entrance fees, was closed, unattended stands of booklets and postcards, pottery, tapestry, stationery all half-lit.

  Again?

  ‘Top-heavy with clergy already, you ask me,’ the policewoman muttered. But George Lackland wasn’t listening.

  ‘Can we come in or not?’

  The policeman thought about it, maybe remembering George’s top-table seat on the West Mercia Police Committee, but then he shook his head.

  ‘Can’t, sir. Sorry. Can you wait for the sergeant?’

  Merrily followed George Lackland back towards the big cannon and the pollarded trees outside the walls.

  Again…?

  ‘They got scaffolding up, see,’ George said. ‘On the inside of the Hanging Tower — idea being they’re going to bar them windows, stop this happening once and for all.’ His accent was broadening under stress. ‘Fellers doing the work, they gets here ’bout half-nine, so obviously nobody could get up while they was there. Girl — teenager — must’ve known that, too, waits till they breaks for lunch, and then she’s up the scaffolding like a monkey and well up on the ledge before anybody spots her.’

  The square seemed to tilt like a giant board game.

  ‘And she…’ Merrily looked up. This close to the curtain wall, the only tower visible was the Keep, from which Robbie Walsh had fallen. ‘The girl’s still up there?’

  ‘Far’s I know, aye. They blocked off the footpath, back of the castle. Somebody told me she’d warned ’em if they brought the fire brigade with a ladder, she’d… well, she’d go off.’

  ‘She’s threatening to jump?’

  ‘Oh aye. Oh, bloody hell, yes.’

  ‘They know who she is?’

  ‘I don’t. They got this psychiatrist there now, reckons he’s got it all worked out. Reckons she’ll come down if they keeps it low-key. Police got all the visitors out, and there’s an ambulance standing by.’

  ‘This psychiatrist…’

  ‘I dunno who he is, but what I reckon is, you should be in there.’ George sank his hands into the pockets of his slacks, looking at the ground. ‘It was me rang Bernard, see… I wanted him to come over. But he wouldn’t.’

  That was no surprise. Bishops didn’t do hands-on. Certainly not in a situation this public, this critical. And who, apart from George and a handful of cranks, would think it was anything at all to do with the Church?

  She looked at the crowded square with a new awareness, saw that most of the shoppers and the tourists knew exactly what was going on but were putting on an act of responsible British disinterest, not glancing at the castle walls at least until they were past the police. And the animated sense of community… that was simply locals and tourists united in veiled voyeurism.

  The local kids were less circumspect, small gangs of them gathering, a boy of about eight dancing around the policewoman on the gate.

  ‘Kelly, how will we know if she jumps, Kelly?’

  ‘
You’ll hear a big bump — now go away.’

  Same laconic policewoman who’d dealt with Bell after Phyllis Mumford drowned. The boy looked mildly shocked for a moment, then let out a cackle of laughter.

  ‘Kids,’ Merrily said. ‘All heart.’

  And thought, Bell?

  Realizing then that she’d been aware, for some moments, of a familiar BMW sports car parked near the Castle Bookshop. She could see a notice in its window, guessed it would say Doctor on Call.

  Well, of course. And she was in no position to say anything. While claiming she was on leave, she’d gone behind Saltash’s back and, worse, Callaghan-Clarke’s, and had had a meeting with George Lackland to discuss the possibility of an exorcism-of-place — must be true, it was in the papers, with a nice big incriminating picture. Merrily Watkins, Deliverance Consultant, had lied from the beginning.

  And she couldn’t, in her own defence, mention Bernie Dunmore’s role in the deception because, after she fell, Bernie was likely to be the principal target. All she could do now to save him from an ignominious exit — and the diocese from the possibility of a disastrous successor — was to resign quietly. Take on the extra parishes and disappear.

  Just around the corner at the end of the block, an elderly man in a hat and a woman in a pink Puffa jacket were standing outside the Assembly Rooms, a placard made of corrugated cardboard stretched between them, its message scrappily written in thick fibre-tip.

  THE INNOCENTS ARE DYING. ONLY THE POWER OF GOD CAN STOP THIS NOW.

  ‘Friends of yours, Mr Mayor?’

  ‘I know them.’

  ‘Mmm.’

  ‘What you saying, Mrs Watkins?’

  ‘Why did you want Bernie here, Mr Mayor?’

  ‘You know why. Because, whatever he says, he believes there’s something evil here.’ George looked over Merrily’s head, across the town. ‘He’s seen it, after all.’

  Merrily watched a fire engine rumbling onto the square, no speed, no lights, no warbler. The emergency services apparently did not take their instructions from a disturbed teenager.