by Gary McMahon
"You've become a cliché, Thomas. Do you know that? A walking, talking cliché from a bad film. This isn't you – this drinking and moping. You were always more proactive than that." She holds my gaze, staring me down, challenging me to disagree.
"I know." She is perhaps the only living person to whom I cannot lie – including myself. "I tried, I really tried. After what happened in the hospital I thought I had a way out of the black hole I'd found myself in, but it didn't work out that way. All that's happened is that I have more questions than answers."
She drops her gaze, and then brings her eyes back up to face me. This time they are softer, and filled with an understanding that she could not possibly fake. "We've already had this discussion, Thomas. What happened at the hospital, with that girl, was weird, but you can't hang your hopes on it. I admit that I can't explain it, but have you considered that it might have been a fluke? I'm not saying it didn't happen the way you and the witnesses say it did, but it may have just been a one-off, a psychological glitch."
An owl hoots outside the window; wings beat frantically against the darkness. "I have thought about that, Ellen, but I've seen things since – things that can't be explained away. I don't know what's happening to me, or what caused it, but the fact remains that for some reason I can see fucking ghosts." My own sudden certainty takes me by surprise. "I see them, but I can't touch them or speak to them. Most of the time they ignore me, but some of them seem to be looking for me – or at least for someone like me." I'm breathless, my lungs aching and my mind tied in knots. "I think the dead need someone to guide them."
There it was: the truth. I had stumbled upon it without even realising.
Ellen presses on, undaunted by my ranting: "I came here to give you some information. I wouldn't do this if I didn't think it might help, so listen up and remember what I'm about to say." The caravan rocks slightly on its base, as if a large animal has brushed against it en route to the adjacent woods. "I've found out the name of the man who caused the accident."
Darkness spins and whirls before my eyes, burrowing deep inside my vision. Ellen's voice becomes faint, as if I am hearing it from a great distance; then it increases in volume, and becomes almost too loud to hear.
"What did you say?"
"The man who caused the accident is living in council accommodation in Luton. As you know, he received a suspended sentence for dangerous driving and lost his licence. He has no memory of the accident, and he's on all kinds of medication. I know it's not exactly compensation for your loss, but his life is ruined, too. It seems that he blacked out before the accident, and when he returned to himself it was all over and he was in the back of an ambulance." Her face is pale but her lips are dark. I can see them moving yet am unable to associate the words I am hearing with her mouth, her face. It is like a voice in my head, telling me things I don't want to hear.
"Why? Why are you telling me this?"
Ellen stands and comes round to my side of the table, squeezing in beside me on the bench that doubles as a rude bed. "Because I think you need to go and see him, to confront him with your pain. What happened was a tragedy, but it was also an accident, and it has ruined both of your lives. You're trying to drink yourself to death while grasping at ghosts, and he's already slashed his wrists and taken an overdose of sleeping pills. Maybe together, if you meet and open up to each other, you can save each other."
Is she crazy? How the hell am I meant to face the man who destroyed my life? Accident or not, the events of that night tore open the seams of my reality and twisted the rest out of shape, removing from my existence the only two people who meant anything to me and slamming visions into my head that I cannot even begin to deal with.
"I don't think that's a good idea. I can't promise how I might react if I ever saw him."
Ellen reaches out to me, both physically and emotionally. I wish I could thank her for her efforts, but it all seems so silly, such a waste of positive energy. "That's why I'm coming with you."
FIFTEEN
Someone was waiting in my front garden when I pulled into the drive early that morning. It was a young female police constable and she was just turning away from my door as I entered the drive, as if she'd been ringing the bell for some time and had finally given up. She smiled when she saw me; her face was round and pretty and there was a deep sense of sadness hanging from her like tattered threads from an old coat. She had recently lost someone, but I didn't know who it might be – perhaps her father or mother; maybe even a sibling. The faded ghost stood behind her, too far back to identify. By the time I'd climbed out of the car and was moving towards her, it was gone.
I used to find it annoying when they did that, but these days I simply accept it. They slip between the folds, glimpsed for a moment, and then they are gone, leaving nothing more than a psychic ripple on the fabric of this version of reality.
"Mr. Usher? Thomas Usher?" The constable's voice was pleasant, with a singsong lilt I enjoyed.
"Yes. Are you looking for me?"
"I'm Police Constable Sarah Doherty. DI Tebbit sent me. He's been trying to reach you and was worried that you might be in some kind of trouble. Is everything okay?"
I smiled, nodded. She was a nice girl and I was sorry for her loss, whoever it was she had lost. "I'm fine. Been off the radar for a few hours, that's all."
PC Doherty was standing with her weight on one foot, one hip thrust out to the side. "There's been a development in a case I believe you've been helping us with. DI Tebbit would like to see you as soon as you're able to come to the station."
"You mean now?" I looked down at myself; I hadn't changed these clothes for two days. "I really could do with a long bath and a short drink. It's been a very trying twentyfour hours."
"I'm sorry, sir." She looked it, too; as if she really did regret having to come for me. "But DI Tebbit said to tell you that it involves you personally, and I'm not to leave without you."
"Am I under arrest?"
"No, no, not at all. I'm sorry if I gave you that idea. Please, don't misunderstand me." She raised her hands in a defensive gesture, clearly uncomfortable. "I can wait for you if you like. I'll sit in my car while you do what you have to do, but please don't think that you are under any kind of official pressure. DI Tebbit said that you'd be very interested in what's happened, and he told me to stress the fact that it's in your best interests to see him as soon as you can."
I felt sorry for the girl for having been used as a messenger, and decided to go with her to the station. If Tebbit was this desperate to see me – desperate enough to waste valuable police resources on summoning me – then it must be important. Tebbit may be many things, but he was not a man to waste people's time. "Give me a minute, Constable Doherty, and I'll be right with you. I just need to go inside and change. Then we can go and see your boss."
I was inside for just over half an hour, enough time to grab a quick coffee, change into a clean suit (dark suits were like a uniform to me; I simply changed into a clean one every couple of days, which meant that I didn't have to think too much about trivialities like clothes) and pull myself together after last night's monumental occurrence. I wasn't quite ready to examine how I felt about Ellen and me making love, and the sex had been oddly unsatisfactory rather than the glorious culmination of years of yearning that I (and surely she) had expected.
Back outside, I climbed into the back of the police car and stared at the back of PC Doherty's lovely neck as she drove. The chestnut hair that hung out of her ponytail was fine and full of static electricity; her neck was pale and smooth and the thin black edge of a tattoo poked out of her shirt collar. Briefly, I wondered what her story was – because everyone has a story, no matter who they are.
The two-way radio barked at us and Doherty reached out to turn down the volume. "Sorry about that," she said, glancing at me in the rearview mirror.
"No problem." I felt uneasy. Virtually my whole adult life had been lived at speed, events moving past like shooting sta
rs, and now, just when I was trying to slow things down, the world was spinning faster than ever. None of it made any sense; I felt lost inside someone else's bad dream.
I stared again at the back of the constable's neck, at the sliver of tattoo she thought she was hiding. Then I thought about my own tattoos, the protective ink that adorned my body and the names I carried with me.
"Who did you lose?"
Her shoulders tensed and the car swerved almost imperceptibly towards the centre of the road before she righted it. "I'm sorry, sir? What was that?"
"Someone you love has died recently. I can see it on you, like a stain. So who was it? Who did you lose? I'll understand if you don't want to talk about it, but it's in my nature to pry about these things." I was doing this to divert my thoughts from Ellen, and felt guilty for using the girl in this way.
There was a long pause, during which I decided that I had probably offended her to the point that she wanted to shoot me. Then the tension went out of her shoulders and she looked at me again in the mirror. "So it's true, then? What they say about you back at the station?"
"And what's that, Police Constable Doherty? Just what do they say about me?" Suddenly I was very interested in what she had to say.
"That you talk to the dead." The car tyres thrummed on the road surface. Sunlight glinted off the windows.
"No. I can't talk to the dead, but they communicate with me all the time. The problem is that I can't always understand what it is they're trying to tell me."
"I lost my father a week ago, but you were wrong about one thing." The tension had returned; her shoulders were hunched as she turned the wheel and guided the car through a gap in a line of stationary traffic.
"What was that?"
"He wasn't somebody I loved. In fact, I hated him. I'm glad he's dead, and if you even try to tell me that his ghost wants to apologise for all the things he's done, I'll fucking kill you."
I said nothing more – what was there left to say? I should not have interfered, but over the years I've learned that if I don't then the dead often interfere with me, and the results can be dreadful. So I ask awkward questions and I hurt people with my unthinking demands, but sometimes the outcome is worth the hassle and bad deeds can be laid to rest.
"We're here." She parked the car and got out to open the door for me.
"I'm sorry," I said as I stood from the back seat. "I learned a long time ago to ask first and apologise later."
She nodded and walked away without another word.
I entered the main building and went straight to Tebbit's office. He was on the telephone when I walked in and motioned for me to sit down. I waited for him to finish his call – it was something to do with a case other than the two I'd somehow become involved with. When he put down the phone he smiled at me, but there was little genuine mirth in his face. He looked ill, ashen, as if the tumour inside him was having a good day, eating away at him and taking its fill. I wondered if he would ever feel bad enough to see a doctor, and then remembered how stubborn he was when it came to matters of his health. The promise I'd made his dead wife was still relevant. She wanted him to pass quietly in his sleep, with a minimum of fuss, and not have to worry about anything but his work in the meantime. What I didn't know was if she knew for a fact what would happen, or if she was orchestrating his peaceful demise from elsewhere, a spiritual surgeon assisting her patient's death from another ward in a different hospital.
"You wanted to see me?"
"Thanks for coming. Before I start, though, I have something for you." He reached into a drawer and pulled out a small cardboard box, which he pushed towards me across the cluttered desktop.
"What the hell is this?" I stared at the box as if it were an alien artefact.
"It's a mobile phone. Pay-as-you-go. All you need to do is keep it topped up – the cost of the phone is being covered by us: essential expenses. When I couldn't get in touch with you, I thought something had happened. I thought you might be dead, or something. I don't want that to happen again, not when you're helping us out like this. Call it peace of mind."
"Whose? Certainly not mine, with that thing in my pocket. I'm sorry, but I quite like not being able to have you track me down at all times of the day and night." I reached out and touched the box with my fingertips, as if it might bite.
"Come on, Usher. Take it. As a personal favour to me."
I sighed and picked up the box, took out the phone and glared at it. I looked at Tebbit, at the bones beneath his flesh, the tumour inside his skull, and I nodded. "Okay. A favour to you. Just don't abuse this. I'm a man who values his privacy."
Tebbit rested his hands on the desk and steepled his fingers, pressing the pale tips against his shadowed chin. "The reason I called you here is because Byron Spinks has asked to see you."
Kareena Singh's boyfriend: the man who everyone but me had down for her murder. Two questions came immediately to mind: how the hell did he know who I was; and why did he want to see me? It made little sense, but then again not much of this whole situation did. By now I was just letting it all come at me, fending the blows as best I could and waiting for the next one to fall. I felt like an old boxer returning to the ring for one last fight, but who is unfit to throw gloves with his much younger opponent. All I could do was stand my ground and hope that my technique would get me through to the final bell.
"Well, that one took me by surprise. Did he say why he wanted to see me?"
Tebbit shook his head. "I'm afraid not. He asked for you late last night, apparently after waking up from a bad dream. He was screaming and wailing so much that he woke up his whole cell block, and when they finally calmed him down he begged them to bring you, said he had something he needed to tell you." A clock ticked too loud from its nail on the wall. Sunlight glimmered through the windows. Footsteps ran by outside the office door. "I'm as puzzled as you are, but Spinks was wound up enough that the prison governor got in touch with my DCS on the spot. It's the most the prisoner's said since we arrested him."
"Ah, yes," I said. "An impressive man, your boss. I saw him at the press conference yesterday."
Tebbit sighed; a long, drawn-out sound. "That's another thing I wanted to see you about. What the hell were you doing there, Usher? I haven't seen you in a year, and then all of a sudden I can't wipe my arse without you handing me the paper."
I'd expected this and had an answer ready. "I was there in a purely personal capacity. A family member, Ellen Lang, asked me to accompany her to the Community Centre. She needed some moral support."
Tebbit looked at me as if I were covered in something unpleasant. "Come on, mate. I don't believe that for a minute. I know that you and Lang are old friends, but I also know that you were there at the direct request of Mrs Royale. I've already warned her to keep you out of this, but for some reason she doesn't want to listen."
The clock had stopped ticking. I glanced at it and for a moment thought that the hands were moving far too quickly around the face; then, abruptly, it started ticking again and everything was normal. "Okay, I'll admit that I was there in a professional role. Ellen asked me as a personal favour. She wants me to see if I can pick up on anything – if the girl, well, I'm sure you get the drift, Tebbit." Even now the antipathy between us could not be held back; despite the mutual respect we had for each other, we shared a vague and complex dislike. It had always puzzled me. Surely friendships weren't meant to be so complicated.
"Just be careful. Please. This is sensitive."
I nodded and placed the mobile phone in my lap. "I do have a favour to ask you. There was a man at the press conference, he ran onto the stage when Mrs Royale broke down. He calls himself Mr Shiloh. What do you know about him?"
"Why do you ask?" Tebbit leaned forward in his chair, his hands parting and opening, the palms pressed flat against the desktop.
"He interests me. I think I might have seen him somewhere before, but can't quite place him." There was no way that I was willing to tell Tebbit exactly where
I'd seen Mr Shiloh before, and that he was a possible link between Kareena Singh's death and the disappearance of Penny Royale. I'm still not quite sure why I kept it from him, but the information seemed private in some way, personal only to me. It was an insane notion, yet it felt right.
"We've already checked him out and he comes up clean. He's an immigrant, born in Russia and brought here by his uncle when he was six years old. His parents were killed during some political rally, and the boy was shipped over here for protection. He has no criminal record, so his past is sketchy at best, but we're reasonably certain that he has nothing to do with the girl's abduction, if that's what you're getting at."
"So you're now officially calling it abduction?"
Tebbit's face seemed to flatten. He realised that he'd said too much and let slip information that was supposed to be kept in-house. "You didn't hear this from me, but we now have a witness who says that he saw two men in hoods following the girl home."