The Smile of a Ghost mw-7

by Phil Rickman

  ‘Not if I obtain an injunction to prevent you—’

  ‘You’re too late. A friend of mine has a long e-mail that we put together, detailing the full story, including a phone number for Helen Weeks and her sister who looks after her and two former porters we contacted who knew of other cases. If this friend doesn’t hear from me by ten tonight, the e-mail goes to the Three Counties.’

  Lol looked into Saltash’s eyes and felt a surprising calm in his spine, like a soft shiver.

  ‘Try me, Nigel. Have me thrown out. Attempt to have me detained. Sectioned. Oh, and you’re in the e-mail, too, of course, in an attachment — transcript of a recorded conversation with Jack Fyneham. I think he’s — God forbid — your godson, isn’t he?’

  ‘Is there a problem, Dr Saltash?’ the policeman said.

  ‘And the Dean of Hereford,’ Lol said to Saltash. ‘He’s quoted too. Quite extensively.’

  Saltash’s smile was like glass. ‘Everything’s fine now, officer, thank you.’

  ‘Always knew there was something not quite right about this boy,’ George said, low-voiced, when they were in the alley at the side of the shop. ‘Someone that age just turns up in town, goes round the estate agents inquiring about flats to rent, cheap, and then he takes a shop at the kind of rent would turn me pale.’

  ‘How do you know that?’ Merrily asked, but he was walking up the steps with the wrought-iron lamp at the top and didn’t answer. She thought, Masons, or perhaps some Old Ludlow traders’ network that was even more mutually supportive and exchanged intelligence on outsiders.

  George took the steps two at a time, and she had a picture of him not going up the steps of the church tower that overheated afternoon, but coming down, very fast, and collapsing against the wall at the bottom, blinded by shame and some forbidden, guilt-gilded exultation that he didn’t, to this day, dare acknowledge.

  ‘Jonathan!’ Banging the door with a knobbly fist. ‘We’d like a word, boy. Councillor Lackland and Mrs Watkins.’

  No answer.

  ‘Try the door, George.’

  Recalling how it had sprung open when she’d flipped the handle from inside, and how glad she’d been because Jonathan had been coming on to her, in the wake of his apparent rejection of Bell’s advances. She’s all over me. Hot and… you know. Anybody could see she were burnin’ up…

  ‘It’s open!’ George went in. ‘Jonathan? It’s Councillor Lackland!’

  She heard him tramping around, a door opening inside. A muffled ‘Jonathan?’ A silence. By the time she was halfway up the stairs, he was out again.

  ‘Let’s go,’ he said hoarsely.

  ‘George?’

  He gripped the iron rail and then breathed in sharply and let go of the rail as though it were white-hot. He drove her down the steps, waving both arms as if he was herding ewes.

  ‘Go down.’

  Her first thought was that he must have walked into something of a sexual nature, but then, when he began to step carefully down himself, keeping close to the wall, away from the rail, she saw the blood on the hand that had touched it.

  There was a bulge like a knuckle in the Mayor’s forehead, and it was pulsing.

  ‘Some things a woman shouldn’t see,’ he said.

  45

  Marion

  ‘Look, Siân,’ Saltash said. ‘Martin’s here.’

  They were in a high but roofless space, some one-time great hall, with the remains of huge fireplaces, one above the other, time-blurred stone heads projecting from the walls along with the weeds. The sergeant, Steve Britton was there, too, as Siân Callaghan-Clarke’s pewter-eyed gaze flicked across to Lol and then back to Saltash, where she must have caught a warning look.

  ‘Hello, Martin,’ she said, finally.

  A woman with presence and authority, Lol thought, but not comfortable here, in her dark grey business suit over the clerical shirt and collar. Not at home in ruins.

  ‘Look.’ Saltash jangled keys or something in a trouser pocket. ‘I’m afraid I shall have to leave you for a short while. I need to make some phone calls.’

  This time Siân didn’t need a signal; she followed him out. Saltash’s calls would be to Lord Shipston, the Fynehams, his friend the Dean. Plans to make, defences to erect. Only the jittery keys expressing nerves.

  ‘I don’t think the Canon’s happy with this,’ Steve Britton said.

  ‘No.’ Lol saw two lightless, narrow openings; one of them had to be the way in to the Hanging Tower.

  ‘Mr Longbeach, let me be frank with you.’ Steve Britton’s hands moved as though he was hefting invisible weights. ‘There’s a very disturbed little girl in there, and we don’t want it to get dark on her. We don’t want to have to bring lights in, make a circus of it. So what I’d like to know — are you the bloke who does this stuff? I mean, I don’t know what you do, and I’m pretty damn sure that kid in there doesn’t, either. You know what I’m saying? If you haven’t got the full bell, book and candle with you, just…’

  ‘Fake it?’

  ‘Fake something.’

  ‘We don’t need to fake it,’ Lol said. ‘There’s someone—’

  ‘Not liking this, Steve.’ A plump woman in an orange fleece with a reindeer motif had come through one of the dark doorways. Black Country accent. ‘I thought we were getting somewhere, now she’s gone back into herself. Getting just a bit spooky again, if I must use that word.’

  ‘This is Mr Martin Longbeach, Sandy,’ Britton said. ‘Another, er, colleague of our friends out there. This is Inspector Sandy Gee, from our family liaison unit.’

  Sandy Gee narrowed her eyes at Lol. ‘I’ve seen you somewhere before, haven’t I? Never forget a face, Martin. It’ll come to me. Meanwhile, I hope you’re prepared to do something. Thought we were getting somewhere, but I’m getting a teensy bit anxious. I think the doctor was right about her being delusional, but if we have to go along with a delusion to save her life, let’s do that, eh?’

  Lol nodded at the opening from which Inspector Gee had emerged. ‘She’s on her own?’

  ‘Hell, no. Female paramed’s in with her. More than two people, she feels threatened, moves further into the window space. We’re trying to keep her talking because once or twice she’s nearly fallen asleep. Now you’d think that would mean we could nip up and snatch her, but she’s so very close to the opening it could just as easily mean she’d rock backwards and… gone.’

  Sandy Gee shuddered. She was about Lol’s age, had frizzy hair, dyed a deep red, and earrings like joined-up multicoloured paper clips. Family liaison: was this the halfway point between policing and social work?

  ‘What I’d like to do,’ he said, ‘is bring in someone—’

  ‘To be quite honest, Martin, for the reasons I’ve just outlined, we really don’t want the world and his wife in there.’

  ‘One person…’ He hesitated. ‘Merrily Watkins?’

  Sandy and Steve swapped glances. Sandy said, ‘Dr Saltash and the Canon—’

  ‘Have changed their minds about her,’ Lol said. ‘They’re probably discussing it now.’

  Sandy Gee sucked in her small mouth, thought about it.

  ‘All right, go and find her, Steve.’ She turned to Lol. ‘Both of them were very firmly of the opinion that any kind of ceremonial would only fortify the fantasy that Sam’s constructed. Dr Saltash insisted that the only sensible strategy would be to gradually make her aware of the reality of her situation.’

  ‘And the fantasy is…?’

  ‘She seems to think that a number of… I don’t know, spirits? Dead people want her to join them. That’s over-simplifying it. It’s a lot to do with guilt at what she thinks she’s done, which Dr Saltash tried to tackle. But, in the end, she feels crowded by… influences she can’t get rid of.’ Sandy glanced over at the entrance to the tower. ‘We’ve managed to find the parents now, and we’re bringing them across, although she insists she doesn’t want to see them, but we’ll argue about that later. You know she was J
emima Pegler’s best friend?’

  Lol nodded. ‘I know about the e-mails.’

  ‘Do you know about the boyfriend situation?’

  Lol shook his head. Sandy took his arm and guided him up to the main way out. A police van was parked in the Inner Bailey now, near the separate round tower.

  ‘Jemmie Pegler, the only friend she had was Sam. But then she stole Sam’s boyfriend, Harry, so that was the end of that. Sam says Jemmie was letting him have sex with her, which Sam wouldn’t. This obviously gave Jemmie a feeling of power — short-lived when she heard what the other boys were saying. Jemmie was fat, you see, like me and, when you’re a fatty at school, life is hell, your self-esteem’s rock-bottom and you absolutely know you’ll never find a boyfriend because you’re so disgusting. If anybody ever got round to compiling statistics on this, I’m pretty sure they’d find that well over half the teenage pregnancies are fat girls. We don’t want to be chubby and mumsy, Martin, we want to be lithe and slinky and do parties, but in the end we go for what we think we can get.’

  ‘Sam and Jemmie had a falling out?’

  ‘Sam didn’t like her any more at all because Jemmie, even before she pinched Sam’s boyfriend, had been going well off the rails for a long time. I think Sam was getting frightened of her at this stage. Big girls, when they cease to be jolly and philosophical, can be very dark and threatening. Doing drugs doesn’t help. Nothing heavy at that stage, in Jemmie’s case — Es and whizz, a bit of blow, but she was moving up, you know? Also hitching rides with stupid little younger boys who’d nicked cars — very ominous. Taking risks. Doesn’t care what happens to her — maybe hoping something will happen to her. Jemmie was coming apart, no question about that.’

  ‘Didn’t having a boyfriend…?’

  ‘Oh well, that didn’t last, did it? Thinks she’s finally got something steady with Sam’s ex-boyfriend… Hoo! Terrific! I’m a real woman! And then, having had his evil way, this lovely Harry dumps her like an old sofa. So Jemmie is now very depressed indeed, because she’s lost the feller, and she’s also lost her very best friend, the only real friend she’s had. So then she’s desperately trying to get back with Sam, bombarding her with pitiful, wheedling e-mails, the way these kids do. They were at different schools, you see?’

  ‘Jemmie was manic-depressive?’

  ‘That was certainly what Dr Saltash thought. Now Sam… the thing with her, she’s a very soft-hearted girl, basically. She’s quite pretty, but not too pretty, and perhaps a bit short on confidence — this is my opinion, you understand, from talking to her and listening to what she’s got to say. I’d guess that Sam was friends with Jemmie very much out of pity, in the early days. Because Sam doesn’t yet have the confidence to make her own way, she’s drawn to the underdogs — well, it’s nice to be needed, isn’t it? But at the end of the day she’s a little girl, she’s not a saint, and she’s really not going to forgive Jemmie that easily — if at all — for the business over the boy. And I think she was very glad, actually, to be free of Jemmie. Only to find herself, I’m afraid, with another underdog on her hands.’

  Sandy Gee folded her arms, bulky in the fleece, and looked at Lol.

  ‘Guess,’ she said.

  Lol shook his head. Behind the clouds, the sun was setting and the stones were full of detail and texture.

  ‘Robbie Walsh,’ Sandy said. ‘There’s a turn-up, eh?’

  In the drabness and dereliction of the Hanging Tower, the first window, the one you could easily reach, was barred.

  Or partly. The two bars didn’t reach to the top of the window, so it would be possible for anyone determined enough to climb up and squeeze over them.

  This window offered a view of the River Teme and the pine woods where The Weir House, apparently, was hidden. Inside the tower, the window was on the ground floor, but outside there was a very long drop to the path at the bottom of the rocks into which the foundations were sunk.

  Was this how Jemmie Pegler had gone?

  Above it — it would have been one storey up if the floors and ceilings hadn’t all gone, leaving the tower as a hollow funnel — was another window, the second of four. A window that would have been inaccessible but for the scaffolding.

  ‘They were going to make it safe,’ Sandy murmured. ‘Ironic, isn’t it?’

  The skeleton of galvanized metal tubing ended about three feet under the window, two planks along the top, a brown mug on the end of one. A wooden ladder extended to the top of the scaffolding; a second one had evidently been pushed away and lay at an angle against the wall.

  The girl was huddled like a squirrel in the deep recess around the second window, about fifteen feet above the floor. A small girl in a pink hoodie and jeans, short brown hair and the glint of a ring at the end of an eyebrow. The window space almost directly behind her was about four feet high and two or three feet wide, and all you could see through it was the darkening sky.

  ‘You want another coffee, Sam?’ Sandy called up.

  Sam didn’t reply.

  ‘How about a hot chocolate? You must be getting cold up there.’

  ‘No, thank you,’ Sam said. They thought she was fourteen or fifteen, but she sounded younger.

  ‘She must be needing to go to the loo by now,’ Sandy whispered to Lol. Then she called back up to the ledge, ‘Sam, if you want to go to the loo, we can organize something.’

  ‘No, thank you.’

  Lol said tentatively, ‘I’m… Martin.’

  Sam didn’t acknowledge him. He wished Steve Britton would get back here, with Merrily.

  Sandy whispered in his ear, ‘Try again, eh?’

  Lol said, ‘About Robbie… it really wasn’t your fault. I can explain why. Can I do that?’

  There was silence. Sandy Gee looked at Lol, showed him fingers crossed on both hands. A bird fluttered at the top of the tower.

  ‘You just keep telling me lies.’ This small, lost voice from the stone ledge.

  Sandy said, ‘This is not a wind-up, Sam. He knows stuff I didn’t know.’

  Before they came in, she’d told Lol what Sam had said earlier, when she’d been more talkative. It seemed her mother had come to spend a week in Ludlow before Christmas to look after Sam’s Auntie Kate, who’d broken a leg, and she’d brought Sam with her, as Sam was very miserable at the time, having just found out about Jemmie and Harry.

  At first, Sam had been really bored in Ludlow: didn’t know anybody, nothing to do. The turning point was the Friday night her mother had taken her on the ghost-walk this guy ran — which Sam expected would be totally crap, but it had turned out to be kind of fun and scary, too, because she basically believed in ghosts and all that stuff.

  And there was this boy there, about Sam’s age, and he’d said if she was interested there were some things he could show her, maybe call for her the next day, and she said yeah, OK. So the next day they went to Gallows Bank, where people used to be hanged, and then this Robbie took her to the castle, where she was quite impressed by him being able to get in for nothing.

  Anyway, they’d spent most of the week together. They came here quite a few times, to the Hanging Tower, and Robbie told her about Marion’s ghost being seen, and they’d stood here and listened for the breathing noise, but they hadn’t heard anything.

  They were just, like, mates — that was how Sam had seen it. She didn’t want another boyfriend so soon after Harry. But it seemed Robbie was more serious about it than Sam was. When she’d gone home, Robbie had kept writing and e-mailing and sending her stuff about Ludlow, and she was interested, but not that interested.

  ‘Sam?’ Sandy Gee said.

  No reply. Sam had half-turned so she was looking out of the window space. From below, Lol could hear ragged singing: a hymn, ‘Oh God Our Help in Ages Past’.

  ‘Oh no,’ Sandy muttered. ‘It’s this bloody religious group. We blocked off the path at both ends specifically to avoid this kind of thing. They must be on some footpath coming up from the river or somewhere.
Damn, damn, damn.’

  ‘Tell them to go away, or I’ll jump,’ Sam suddenly shouted. ‘Tell them!’ She stood up and leaned out over the drop. ‘Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!’

  ‘We’ll get a message to them,’ Sandy said. ‘All right?’

  What else could she say? From less than twelve feet away from them, Sam was holding all the cards. When the kid turned to face them, she was in tears.

  This was pitiful. An obvious cry for help. People rarely kill themselves as self-punishment, Dick Lyden, the psychotherapist, had once told Lol. They kill themselves because life isn’t worth living any more. That’s it, basically. Nothing subtle.

  But what had begun as a cry for help had often ended in tragedy, Dick had emphasized. A cry for help wasn’t that easy to stage-manage, and they often lost control.

  Suddenly, Lol was remembering something that Merrily had told him the night after Mumford’s mother had died.

  About a letter that Robbie Walsh had written to a ghost.

  ‘Sam,’ he said, ‘were you Marion?’

  Sandy Gee looked at him in some alarm, like he was suggesting reincarnation. The hymn outside had become ‘Rock of Ages’.

  ‘Did Robbie call you Marion?’ Lol said. ‘Did he write to you, e-mails and stuff… sent to you as Marion?’

  Sam moved away from the window, leaning over the scaffolding.

  ‘She’s frightened.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Marion,’ Sam said.

  Sandy leaned in, whispered, ‘This is what’s been happening. Be careful.’

  Sam looked down at Lol. It was getting quite dark in here now. Her face was white.

  ‘Tell me about Robbie and Marion,’ Lol said.

  Sam sat on the ledge, under the window.