by Phil Rickman
‘A stain on the pillow.’
‘In an indentation.’
‘She reported this?’
‘When she went downstairs, Helen was there. Palk’s like, had your bedding been washed? Claiming she didn’t notice it last night – early this morning – because she was too tired. But oh, how disgusting. How cheap of them. And yes, she’s right, it would have been a pretty bloody cheap trick. If it hadn’t been a new pillowcase, fresh from the wrapping.’
‘You’re sure about that?’
‘We got the housekeepers on the phone.’
The housekeepers are a company, based in Cheltenham, on 24-hour call. They’re booked to come in every day. Grayle figures they don’t recycle old bedding. Jo grimaces.
‘They were quite annoyed. Like their hygiene standards were being questioned. All the pillowcases are new. Leo’s wondering what we do next. Send it for analysis?’
‘I’m guessing you wouldn’t find anything unusual. Nothing foreign to the room. Nothing you couldn’t scrape out of a dusty corner.’
‘You encountered this kind of thing before?’
‘Well, similar. It’s never, like, moondust or anything. What’s Palk saying?’
‘Nothing specific. She’s just disgusted at having slept on it.’
‘On what? How’s she describe it?’
‘As a dirty pillow.’
‘Where it looks like a man’s unclean head has lain. That mentioned?’
‘You said it. She didn’t.’
‘But is that what it looked like?’
Grayle feeling the questions being ripped out of her.
‘I’ve only seen it on here,’ Jo says, ‘but yes, apparently it did. Like a man with dirty hair had lain there and rolled his head from side to side. But I don’t want even to think about that.’
‘Anyone know apart from Helen?’
‘She won’t say anything. But think if it had been Eloise?’
‘Nothing disturbed Eloise?’
‘Full night’s sleep, it looked like. Like everyone else, far as we can tell.’
On several monitors, Grayle watches the residents gathering in the dining hall, summoned by bells: Ashley Palk with a cardigan around her shoulders, helping herself to toast, Eloise searching for muesli, Herridge and Sebold doing the full English. Ozzy Ahmed sitting alone with a coffee.
The place is a hotel again. Grayle feels a pressure – to say something, do something. Let in some hard daylight.
‘OK. Jo, you need to tell me. Is someone doing this? Has Defford hired somebody, like he’s hired Cindy, as insurance? Is stuff getting messed up deliberately. Is there a game plan?’
Jo stands up, walks out, hauling her tote bag after her. Doesn’t speak until they’re outside, like you don’t diss God in the temple. The sun is palely visible in the brownish sky, like an old coin in the sand at the bottom of a wishing well. Jo lights up a cigarette, gazing out over the site.
‘I’ve never worked with him before. But he doesn’t have a reputation for sharp practice, or Channel 4 wouldn’t touch him. On the other hand, I agree you don’t go into something like this without fallbacks.’
‘But he hasn’t told you about anything.’
‘All I know is about Cindy, because it was my job to set him up.’
‘So Defford could, far as you know, have other deals going with other residents?’
‘Anything’s possible, but I can’t see it. Everybody informing on each other, it would just make a farce of the whole project. Let’s not ignore the other possibility which is that Palk did it herself.’
‘Messed up her pillow?’
‘When you think about it, they all want Big Other to be a massive success, attract record viewing figures, re-fire their careers. And if that means helping it along the way…’
‘Palk’s an arch-sceptic. A professional sceptic.’
‘So she lets us build this up into a spooky head-on-a-pillow situation and, towards the end of the week, she’s saying, You suckers, how easily you fell for my little scam.’
‘You really think Palk would do that?’
‘I’m not ruling it out, Grayle.’
‘OK, yeah, it’s possible.’
Now she thinks about it, you look back over Palk’s lectures and her pieces on YouTube, it was all acerbic stuff at one time. No leeway given; anyone so much as sent their kids to Sunday school was a hopeless crank. But not here, where even the condescending smile’s been less in evidence. Grayle thinks of the Antichrist, Richard Dawkins. One day it’s all withering scorn, then he’s describing himself as a secular Christian, who loves the liturgy, just a shame about there having to be a God. That other guy, de Botton, playing the same game. And, to a sceptic, it is a game.
What a goddamn can of worms this is.
‘Leo’s calling a meeting about it, anyway,’ Jo says. ‘How we air the dirty linen, as it were, without appearing to declare an opinion. At some stage today you’ll be talking to Palk in the chapel. You’ll be told what to ask. I’m just forearming you’
‘Thanks.’
Walking all around it.
Hands in coat pockets, Grayle walks all around the TV city, past the truck with the satellite dish, around the pop-up hotels, out towards the woods where Harry Ansell hanged himself. There’s a partially-collapsed drystone wall, the boundary reinforced by a wire fence, and the trees the other side: larch, oak and elder – ubiquitous, she’s seeing it everywhere this morning, with the grooves, the leaning branches, like they were all bowed by the weight of Judas Iscariot.
Above it all, the sun is a lustrous bubble. Like the eyes of the…
Did she see that? Those egg-white eyes, as the head swung?
Did the head swing? Did it? Or does your mind just make these moments meld? You hear about a hanging, and you gather it into the sickening mix, out of which false memories spawn.
But under the surface scum, there are small moments of actuality. This is how it happens. It isn’t Amityville. Nobody dies, no animals are hurt in the making of this haunting. It’s about small things: the wrong wood, a soiled pillow, stone demons in your dreams.
In a hip pocket of her jeans, the cellphone rings; she fumbles it out, stares into its screen, doesn’t recognize the number.
She wraps an arm around a fence post.
‘Underhill.’
An echoey ambience.
Miss Underhill, the voice will say. Harry Ansell. I think you left a message for me.
But then nothing. Somebody misdialled. She loses the call.
Clouds are closing the sun’s cold eye when the cell goes again.
Jo says, ‘Grayle, can you get back here?’
Trying for clipped and businesslike, not making it.
46
Guilty
‘ON HIS WAY there now.’
Jo standing by the reality-gallery truck, holding the door open with one hand, the other pushing the air like she’s sweeping Grayle in.
‘This is Defford’s idea?’
‘Soon as he saw the rushes, he’s demanding we pull Ahmed into the chapel before he talks to anyone else. In case he’s winding us up. Leo’s getting very sensitive about being pissed about.’
‘It look to you like he was winding us up?’
‘Doesn’t matter. Go. Start off quietly, but push him a bit, you know what he’s like.’
‘What about Palk?’
‘Palk can wait. Palk’s less volatile.’
‘So, like, where’s he now – Leo?’
Jo points to the stable.
‘And he’ll be listening.’
In the booth, Grayle sits down, throws on the cans. In the monitor, Ozzy Ahmed is arranging himself in the churchy-looking chair. He’s wearing his Jesus Saves hoody. He leans back, his brown eyes unmistakeably wary.
The green light comes on. Grayle clears her throat.
‘How are you this morning, Ozzy?’
‘OK.’
‘Good night’s sleep?’
‘Not ba
d.’
She waits, counts the seconds, one, two, three. OK.
‘We, uh… we all saw you doing a few odd things early this morning.’
‘Thought you didn’t shoot in the bathroom.’
‘Ozzy, we saw you trying the bedroom door. Locking it and unlocking it.’
‘So?’
‘Did you not feel secure in your room?’
No reply. Ozzy’s fingers are drumming on the arms of his chair, both hands.
‘Was it a good night’s sleep?’
‘Nobody has a good night’s sleep in a strange place. With the emphasis on strange.’ Pause. ‘Especially when some bugger’s trying to make it even stranger. Know what I mean?’
‘No. In what way?’
Ozzy seems to realize what his fingers are doing, how this might suggest nerves. He clasps his hands across his middle, shaking his head slowly.
‘You really are buggers, aren’t you?’
Grayle’s about to reply and then bites it off, staring into the dome where the green light comes on. Nobody watching her from outside the booth which suggests they wouldn’t know how to advise her.
On her own with this, the first real challenge. Ozzy looks into camera.
‘Cat got your tongue?’
‘Ozzy, what do you think we’re doing to you?’
‘I thought that wine last night tasted a bit bloody funny.’
Don’t argue.
‘You think I’m really, really stupid? This is worse than that fucking troll with the funeral cart.’
She says nothing.
‘Out-of-work actors,’ Ozzy says.
‘Actors.’
‘Only this one’s got a speaking part.’
‘Ozzy, who are we talking about?’
‘The woman. As you know. Tell me I’m being stupid. Go on, tell me.’
‘In your room?’ Grayle feels a skein of sweat on her forehead. ‘You saying you saw a woman in your room?’
‘You know what?’ He sinks down into the chair, arms folded now. ‘I think I’m saying nothing without my solicitor.’
‘Was that this morning or in the night?’
‘I don’t have to play this game.’
‘I think you need to explain.’
‘No comment,’ Ozzy says.
And keeps saying that to whatever questions she asks until someone activates the red light and she winds it up.
Defford’s waiting in the live gallery, and Max, the psychiatrist, is with him.
‘Tell me what you think is happening, Grayle?’ Defford says.
Bags under his eyes. Day one, the programme not even aired yet, and he has bags. For a moment Grayle feels kind of empowered.
‘How’m I supposed to give you an opinion on that when I don’t know what you’re doing either.’
Jo’s eyes flashing warnings. Grayle thinks, the hell with that.
‘Ahmed figures you’re doing something to him. I mean like, are you?’
‘No.’ Defford stands up. ‘No, we aren’t. It’s not the purpose of this programme to mislead the residents. And you know everything you need to know to give an opinion. Why is he angry with us?’
‘He obviously thinks we’re playing with his head.’
‘Max?’
‘I’d agree.’ Max is wearing a white sweatshirt that says HOUSE SHRINK. ‘He either thinks that or he wants us to think he does. And it didn’t look like that to me. He was very serious.’
‘I was clearly getting nowhere fast,’ Grayle says. ‘Whatever he thinks he’s seen, he doesn’t wanna discuss it. He feels used. He’s like you, Leo, needs to feel in control. I— Sorry I’m doing Max’s job here.’
Max says, ‘It doesn’t take a psychiatrist to know that Ozzy also needs to occupy his stage persona. He needs to be funny. He wants us to think he’s always funny – and most of the time he succeeds.’
‘Not much of that in evidence this morning,’ Defford says.
‘You noticed that.’
‘That’s why we’re all here. We have to react to the unexpected. So you really think he feels he saw something in his room?’
‘And that makes him angry,’ Max says. ‘Because Ozzy’s a non-believer in the paranormal, God, whatever. He looks at Eloise and he sees elements of his famous mother-in-law, and the very thought of winding up in that state… So yes, anything even faintly anomalous and he’s scared. And angry, as you saw.’
‘So, what’s happening?’ Defford sits down again, thumbs pushing into the chair’s seat like he’s trying to choke something. ‘We need to know.’
Grayle flops into a swivel chair.
‘OK, he’s a pro. He knows there’s a camera or two in his room. Why wasn’t he playing to them?’
‘As we’ve established,’ Max says, ‘he’s a comedian who doesn’t need a script to be funny. If he can’t say anything clever, he says nothing. And he really hates being in that situation.’
Defford says, ‘You think maybe he awoke, forgot what this was about? Forgot he was on camera?’
‘That’s a possibility. Might’ve been a dream. With hindsight, Grayle, you might’ve asked if he remembered any dreams.’
‘If you wanna take over in there, Max, fine with me.’
‘Thank you, but no. My sort of questions are not what Leo’s looking for.’
‘Too rational, huh?’
Max grins, then thinks of something else.
‘It’s also a possibility that the attitude of consternation that Ozzy’s showing in the bedroom is actually masking some other reaction that he really doesn’t want to show.’
‘Like what?’
‘Not sure I want to say, Leo. Don’t have any evidence.’
‘Equally, Max, we don’t have time to piss about.’
‘All right. Some emotions are harder to convert convincingly to anger than others. Anger, however, is an excellent way to smother fear.’
Grayle notices that this doesn’t seem to displease Defford.
She says, ‘He was checking the locks on the door. Presumably to see whether he’d locked it before he went to bed. Which he does appear to have done. Suggesting strongly that nobody came in. In the night.’
Max nods.
‘That’s how it looked to me.’
‘You think he’d’ve even mentioned it, if Leo hadn’t decided we should haul him into the chapel?’
‘Hold on, guys.’ It’s Jo, watching the screens. ‘I’m guessing he’s about to unload something.’
The residents are gathered in the chamber. First time Grayle’s seen them here in daylight. Not that there’s much of that with the false wall, just a faint greening of the air beyond the candlelight. Fat candles now, in a huddle on the drinks table. Grayle realizes there’s no clock in here. This could soon get seriously disorienting.
The first words she picks up are from Ashley Palk.
‘And they won’t admit anything?’
‘Buggers.’ Ozzy Ahmed sprawled in his chair. ‘But at least we know where they’re coming from. Won’t get fooled again. As they say.’
‘Not where I understood they were coming from.’ Roger Herridge looks concerned. ‘Or I wouldn’t have done it. This is supposed to be a situation where we open ourselves up to the possibility of psychic phenomena. Not a bloody ghost train.’
In the gallery, Defford winces. A camera finds Cindy, inoffensive in a mauve twinset, adding an innocent log to the fire.
‘Austin,’ he says, ‘do you recall dreaming at all last night?’
Ozzy stares at him.
‘Meaning what?’
‘In unusual circumstances, a strange and disconcerting place, dreams can be remarkably vivid.’
Ozzy looks suddenly weary.
‘Yeah. Whatever.’ Sinks into his grey velvet armchair, eyes closed. ‘Let’s call it a dream. Let’s give them a get-out. Benefit of the doubt, man.’ Opens one eye to peer at Cindy. ‘Or whatever you are.’
‘Austin, could I perhaps ask you… how well could you see this wom
an?’
‘Dunno.’
‘What was she like? All I’m thinking is… well, dead of night, with the lights out, no windows… how would you know she was there?’
‘Didn’t get where I am today without knowing when there’s a woman in my bedroom.’
‘As you’re obviously not taking it seriously…’
The camera pulls back to find Roger Herridge, his face reddening. Ozzy looks up from the depths of his chair.
‘Don’t be a twat, Roger, I’m just not letting it get to me, all right?’ He sits up. ‘All right, it was a shadow. And a scent. Perfume. Really, really wouldn’t like to think it was you, Cindy. Guilty.’
Silence.
‘It’s a perfume. By Gucci. Guilty. How would I know a thing like that? Because my wife wore it occasionally, when we first started going out. Never forget that one, do you?’
He’s silent for a while, his dark brown eyes uncertain, like a dog wondering if it should go for someone’s throat, Grayle thinks.
‘Not one I wear,’ Cindy says softly.
‘Anyway.’ Ozzy sits up. ‘Obviously not the first time I’ve dreamt about it,’ he says. ‘Guilty.’
‘God,’ Grayle says.
She looks at Jo, then Defford and, finally, at Max.
‘First he’s accusing us of trying to mess with his head, putting someone into his room. Then, when Cindy plants the idea it could’ve been a dream he hardly argues at all. Takes the easiest way out. What’s that say, Max?’
Max is running his tongue over his upper front teeth. Quiet in the gallery, quiet in the house.
‘Not an easy one, Grayle.’
‘Only, I’m no shrink but what it says to me is Ozzy’s been going through all the motions in an effort to convince himself that he didn’t experience anything remotely paranormal last night.’
‘And failing,’ Max says.
47
Shrine
THEY WERE MAKING a documentary about the cult of Diana. And it was a cult, in the original sense. She was a goddess – much more of one than any Hollywood film star, because she was the real thing: the fairy-tale princess. And then the fallen angel. That wonderfully sordid death in a tunnel with the boyfriend and the international paparazzi buzzing around on their motorbikes like a cloud of stinging insects.