Soho Ghosts (The Soho Series Book 2)

by Greg Keen

  ‘Why did you go?’ I asked.

  ‘My parents were all for it.’ Judy’s eyes flicked to the photo of the elderly couple. ‘They thought it would give me advantages they didn’t have. When the interview panel heard my accent, I was sure it would be an automatic refusal. By the time I was offered a place it was impossible to say no.’

  ‘How old were you?’ I asked.

  ‘Fourteen.’

  ‘Must have been tough.’

  ‘It was. If I’d stayed in Doncaster, things might have turned out differently.’ Judy paused for a moment and seemed to think about this. ‘Then again, perhaps they wouldn’t. Maybe we all end up where we’re meant to end up.’

  This vaguely melancholic sentiment hung in the air. There were a few questions I still wanted to ask Judy. One took precedence over the others.

  ‘You said there was an exception to the rule about your being unhappy,’ I reminded her. ‘What was that, exactly?’

  ‘George Dent,’ she said.

  Which was when the outside door opened.

  SIXTEEN

  Connor Clarke had the broad shoulders, narrow hips and swollen biceps of a natural athlete. He was wearing faded jeans and a checked thermal shirt. His blonde hair was an inch or so longer than in the photograph on the bureau, and a pair of thick-framed black glasses leavened out the jock look with a hint of geek.

  Presumably Judy didn’t receive many visitors, as he performed a double take on seeing me perched on the sofa. ‘Connor, this is Kenny Gabriel,’ she said. ‘He’s a private investigator.’

  Connor didn’t appear thrilled to see me but he observed the social niceties. After giving Judy a kiss on the cheek, he turned to me and we shook hands. ‘Don’t think I’ve met a private investigator before. Sounds exciting.’

  ‘Actually, I’m more of a skip-tracer. It’s less exciting.’

  ‘Trying to track people down?’

  ‘Pretty much.’

  ‘And that’s what Judy’s helping you with?’

  ‘It’s about an old school friend, Connor,’ Judy interjected.

  ‘As long as that’s all he’s asking about.’

  Connor gave me a hard stare before turning to Judy. He crouched beside her and asked, ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘Not so bad, Con.’

  ‘Any dizziness today?’

  Judy shook her head.

  ‘Did you take your meds?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘And ate something straight afterwards?’

  ‘I managed a glass of milk.’

  ‘You’ve got to eat solids, Judy, even if it’s just half a bowl of cereal. Remember Dr Anderson said the pills would absorb better that way.

  ‘I’ll try tomorrow.’

  ‘Promise?’

  ‘I promise.’

  Judy was rewarded with a kiss on the forehead. Connor stood up. ‘I’ll put another hour in and then make us something nice for lunch,’ he said. Judy smiled and nodded. Her son scowled at me. ‘You won’t be taking much longer, hopefully. As you can see, Judy’s energy levels aren’t great right now.’

  ‘Only a few more minutes,’ I said.

  ‘Just make sure that’s all it is.’

  He left the room without a goodbye. It had been short and not particularly sweet, at least not as far as I was concerned. Connor’s attitude to his ailing parent had been of a different order. Who would comfort Kenny in his declining years? Supermarket Scotch and daytime TV, probably. Always assuming I could afford them both.

  ‘Sorry about that,’ Judy said. ‘Connor lived through some unpleasant stuff with the media. It’s made him very protective.’

  ‘When you transitioned?’ I said, hoping that was the correct verb.

  ‘That’s right. Certain papers weren’t very happy with the NHS funding my procedure. In the end I had to send him to stay with my parents.’

  ‘What about his mother?’

  ‘Returned to Australia after we divorced.’

  ‘Didn’t she want to take Connor with her?’

  ‘Pam made token noises but she wasn’t at all maternal,’ Judy said. ‘When I threatened a legal challenge, the towel was thrown in pretty quickly.’

  ‘I take it Connor doesn’t know about what happened at Hibberts?’

  ‘Is there any reason he should?’

  ‘I suppose not,’ I said. ‘You were talking about George Dent . . .’

  Judy’s right leg twitched several times, as though an electrical charge had passed through it. She held her thigh steady for a few moments before responding. ‘Hibberts was like most public schools. Lots of adolescent boys keen to experiment but lacking girls to collaborate with.’

  ‘They experimented with each other?’

  ‘For the vast majority, it’s just their hormones bubbling over. Once they have access to the opposite sex, that’s an end to it.’

  ‘But not George Dent?’

  Judy shook her head. ‘George was properly gay. He hid it well and he didn’t take part in any fumblings in the cricket pavilion or after lights-out in the dorm. Incredibly disciplined, when you think about it.’

  ‘Did he confide in you?’ I asked.

  ‘After a fashion. I’ve known I was in the wrong body since I was five. You become very observant when you carry a secret round all the time. It must be a little like being a spy. Constantly on the lookout in case someone susses you.’

  ‘And George was in the same boat?’

  ‘He sensed there was something different about me and that it wasn’t just my flat vowels. George was a decent runner and we used to train on the Heath. One afternoon we took a break by the ponds. Some guys were swimming and George said that, on the whole, he thought he might prefer boys to girls. I said that, on the whole, I might prefer to be a girl than a boy. He asked me what I meant, and that was that.’

  ‘Quite brave of you to confide in each other.’

  ‘Actually, we’d come close a couple of times before. It was just a matter of getting across the line, to use a running metaphor.’

  ‘And afterwards you became friends?’

  ‘More that it took the friendship to a different level.’

  ‘Did George persuade you to go into the cemetery?’

  ‘He asked if I’d go along. Have you spoken to Simon Paxton?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Are you going to?’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘Simon was peculiar, even then. When he looked at you it was as though he knew what you were thinking. He scared me shitless, if you’ll excuse the expression, although he and Will seemed to get on well enough, which was a surprise.’

  Judy dabbed her mouth with the hankie. It’s tough to imagine any man in his mid-fifties as a sixteen-year-old; when he’s wearing court shoes and a pleated skirt, it’s tougher still. Life changes us all. It had changed Judy Richards more than most.

  ‘I don’t understand why you agreed to go to the cemetery,’ I said. ‘Weren’t you worried that you’d be expelled?’

  ‘I think at some level that’s what I was hoping for. Although it might not have been, had I known how it would affect my parents.’

  ‘They were upset?’

  ‘Devastated. Can you imagine how it must feel to have your son set up for life, only to have him throw it all away?’

  It didn’t take much imagination, what with having done pretty much the same thing to my own parents. ‘How did they react?’ I asked.

  ‘It would have been better had they bawled me out, told me that I’d flushed my prospects down the toilet and never forgiven me.’

  ‘But that’s not what happened?’

  Judy adjusted her position on the sofa and rolled her head around her neck. I wondered if the cause of her tension was physical or emotional.

  ‘They were very understanding and said that everyone makes mistakes in life. Of course, that made it infinitely worse. But if it was excoriation I was after, then it was in no short supply at the local comp.’


  ‘The kids gave you a tough time?’

  ‘And the teachers. You can’t blame them, I suppose. I’d turned my back on state education and then come scuttling back when I couldn’t hack it with the rich kids. At least, that’s what it must have looked like.’

  ‘But you passed your exams?’

  ‘Just about.’

  ‘And became a teacher yourself?’

  ‘Not immediately. Dad got me a job in customer accounts at the water board.’

  ‘Were any of the H&S kids in touch?’

  ‘A letter from George arrived out of the blue one day about six years after the cemetery incident. He’d just come down from Oxford and was working as a researcher for the Labour Party.’

  ‘What did he want?’

  ‘To apologise for what happened that night. He said it had been playing on his mind and wondered if I wanted to meet up.’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘What was the point? Our lives were as different as different could be. George was contributing to international policy documents and I was trying to explain to pensioners why their bill was £6 higher than it had been last quarter. I was clever, Kenny. If I’d stuck Hibberts out for a couple more years . . .’

  Judy stared at her lap as though her alternate future were playing itself out there. ‘What did you do with the letter?’ I asked, to bring her back to the here and now.

  ‘Resealed the envelope and sent it back,’ she said.

  ‘And that was the last you heard from George Dent?’

  ‘Not quite. When my gender reassignment hit the news, he sent me a note saying that if there was anything he could do to help I should get in touch.’

  ‘But you didn’t?’ Judy shook her head. ‘How did you get from the water board to working as a teacher?’ I asked.

  ‘My grandfather died and left me a few thousand in his will. I used it to move back to London and study for a PGCE.’

  ‘Couldn’t you have done that locally?’

  ‘Probably, but there were other things in my life by then that were made considerably easier by living in a big city.’

  ‘And you’ve been a teacher ever since you qualified?’

  ‘Until my illness retired me.’

  ‘Always in London?’

  ‘Yes. It’s not been a bad life, and I’ve had Connor, which has been wonderful. A few years more would have been nice, but that’s not going to happen. I’ve made my peace with the world and I intend to enjoy whatever time I have left.’ Judy’s voice had thickened and her eyelids began to flutter. ‘I’m afraid that’s as much as I can manage, Kenny,’ she said.

  ‘It’s been useful,’ I said. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Would you mind assisting me to the bedroom?’

  Helping Judy up was an awkward manoeuvre. Eventually she was on her feet. Our journey across the room was laborious. Her energy levels had depleted to the point that she was virtually a dead weight. We entered the passage like contestants in some kind of tragic three-legged race. She nodded at a door and I toed it open. Cecil the cat shot out and headed for the kitchen. God knows how he’d got in there.

  Judy’s bedroom was small and neat. The dressing table looked as though it had been purchased in IKEA, the wardrobe made from MDF sometime in the eighties. The walls were lilac and a jute rug protected the floor. Artificial citrus notes came from a scent bottle on the table that had three sticks poking out of it. It smelled as though we had entered an ersatz lemon grove.

  Lowering Judy on to the bed felt like depositing a corpse into a shallow grave. She was unconscious before her head hit the pillow. On the bedside table were two photographs. One was of Connor when a toddler, the second of a boy who had probably just entered his teens. Ray Clarke’s smile wasn’t quite as broad as his parents’. After everything Judy had told me, perhaps there was a reason for this.

  I looked from the image of a curly-haired adolescent with everything before him to a woman living on the bones of her arse and who probably wouldn’t be around at all in a year’s time. One of Odeerie’s favourite axioms sprang to mind.

  Life is shit and then you die.

  SEVENTEEN

  The first thing I did after leaving Judy’s flat was spark up a Marlboro. It felt good to have cool autumn air on my face and smoke hitting the back of my throat. I hung over the balcony wall and watched Connor Clarke clipping one of the trees in the garden. A couple of the young mums were also casting glances in his direction.

  My conversation with Judy hadn’t been particularly illuminating, although at least she hadn’t seen Porteus’s ghost. If he hadn’t been troubling Blimp Baxter either, then I could report this to Malcolm and concentrate on finding Martin McDonald.

  I stubbed out my fag at the bottom of the stairs and dropped the butt into a litter bin. I was trying to work out how to use my new phone when someone shouted my name. Connor Clarke was beckoning me into the garden.

  I hopped over the small wall and made my way across the grass. Connor was standing under a beech tree holding a pair of long-handled secateurs. He laid the tool down and removed his gardening gloves. ‘I wanted to apologise, Kenny. I was rude to you earlier and there was no call for it. Judy’s all I’ve got and sometimes that makes me more suspicious than I ought to be. Can we start again?’

  Our handshake lasted longer than the one twenty minutes earlier.

  ‘I left Judy in her bedroom sleeping,’ I said. ‘She seemed pretty exhausted. I hope that wasn’t entirely my fault.’

  ‘I’m sure it wasn’t,’ Connor said. ‘She’s been doing really well recently but the exhaustion can still come out of a clear blue sky. That’s something we’ll have to get used to until she’s better.’

  ‘I understand your mother has motor neurone disease,’ I said, before realising my error. ‘Sorry, it’s just that—’

  ‘It’s an understandable mistake, Kenny. And Judy’s more my mother than my birth mother ever was. She asked me what I wanted to call her when she transitioned. I opted for Judy and that’s what it’s been ever since.’

  ‘Even so, it must have been a bit odd for you.’

  Connor pursed his lips, as though this was something he had never considered. ‘At first, perhaps, but the change was gradual. And children adapt pretty quickly.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ I said. ‘What’s the prognosis for Judy’s illness?’

  ‘She should be fully recovered in six months or so.’

  ‘Is that what the doctors say?’

  Connor smiled. ‘Doctors are fools.’

  ‘You sought a second opinion?’

  ‘Wouldn’t you, for someone you love? We need to put more work in but it will all pay off in the end. It’s simply a matter of time.’

  I wondered if Connor and Judy had approached some kind of quack faith healer. There was no shortage of charlatans prepared to take cash from the desperate. If so, Judy had seemed far less confident of a happy outcome than her son.

  Connor tucked his gloves into his pocket and scratched the back of his neck. A pair of crows took off from the tree behind him and cawed their way into the air.

  ‘The garden looks nice,’ I said. ‘Do the other residents pitch in?’

  ‘No, it’s just me. I’m taking an MSc in horticulture and the trust subsidises my rent if I put in a few hours every week.’

  Connor stared at the leaves covering the grass. Years in Odeerie’s employ have taught me the value of shutting up, particularly when it appears that someone wants to get something off his chest. I sensed that was the case with Connor. I was right.

  ‘Judy’s been getting hate mail,’ he said. ‘A lot of it’s about her illness being God’s punishment. I wondered if that was the reason you were seeing her . . .’

  Connor’s fishing was understandable. Judy’s claim that I was interested in an old schoolmate hadn’t sounded a hundred per cent credible, even if it was half-true. But I’d guaranteed the woman confidentiality, so I nodded and refused the bait.

  ‘I don’t suppose you
have any experience of that sort of thing?’ he continued. ‘On a professional level, I mean.’

  ‘How many letters has she received?’ I asked.

  ‘The fourth came a few days ago. There’s been the usual Internet trolling but that didn’t bother her too much. The letters really seem to get her down.’

  ‘Have you spoken to the police?’

  ‘What’s the point? There weren’t any physical threats, just a lot of crazy shit about burning in hell and quotes from the Bible.’

  ‘Did you keep the letters?’ I asked.

  Connor shook his head. ‘Judy wanted them destroyed.’

  ‘Were they sent through the regular mail?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘If things escalate then it’s a good idea to have the previous communication if the police need to act,’ I said. ‘Although it’s probably just some saddo getting his kicks.’

  ‘Thanks for your advice,’ Connor said. ‘I’ll bear it in mind. Will you want to see Judy again, or did she tell you what you needed to know?’

  ‘I think that’s it for now.’

  ‘And it’s really nothing we should be worried about?’

  I was wondering how to field this question when a little girl saved me the bother. She was fiddling with the door handle on the gardener’s hut. The size of a small garage, it had been given a mock-Tudor look completely at odds with its surroundings. Connor trotted over and picked her up.

  ‘There’s lots of sharp tools in there, Maisie,’ he said. ‘You’ve got to be careful.’ The kid was delighted at being swept off the ground. Even more delighted when Connor deposited her across his broad shoulders. ‘Shall we take you to Mummy?’ Maisie nodded enthusiastically. ‘Sorry again for being so short,’ Connor said to me.

  ‘Not a problem,’ I replied.

  He smiled and trotted back to the swings, with Maisie squealing as though on a fairground ride. I returned to my phone. There were two messages. My brother’s required no reply. I’d asked whether he could arrange for me to visit Peter’s house. He was confirming that Peter’s ex-wife would be there all day.

  The second was from Sally Thomas, whom I’d met in Mermaid Court and given permission to take the painting. She answered almost immediately. ‘Hello, Sally, it’s Kenny Gabriel. You left a message . . .’