by Syd Moore
‘Thank you,’ Sam said still beaming.
Her eyes lingered on him a moment, then she leant coyly into the door, lengthening her spine along the edge of it, pushing her chest out in a none-too-subtle fashion. ‘I suppose you’re these ghostbusters I’ve been hearing about?’
I wasn’t going to be pressured into discussing sensitive matters on her doorstep. ‘My name is Rosie Strange,’ I said in such a mannered way Michael Caine would have been proud. ‘Can we come in?’ I left off the ‘please’ as the blocking business was really starting to get on my nerves.
‘I’m on my way out to lunch,’ MT whinged again, but a twangy note in her delivery suggested she was on to a loser with this one and she knew it. ‘Can’t this wait until tomorrow?’ She made a last-ditch attempt to persuade Sam and widened her eyes.
I’m glad to say my colleague shook his head. ‘I’m afraid not.’ Then he shifted his weight to his rear foot and leant away from her leaving a respectful distance between the pair of them. Him and her, that is. ‘I take it you’ve heard the news about Seth?’
There was a moment’s pause then MT cast her eyes at the floor. A flash of uncertainty passed across her pretty bronzed face. ‘Awful, awful business. I hope they get the bastard. Really I do. It’s gutting.’
A choice selection of words, I thought and watched her poke a stray leaf out of the hallway with her shoe, a high-heeled patent number in nude. The beigey colour matched her lipstick. She was well accessorised, for sure, but I had to say I never really understood why some people went for neutral shades when everything else about them was so obviously enhanced. Cosmetics, I thought, were all about providing contrast. Making things stand out. That said, I could see a dusting of shimmer bringing out her cheekbones and there was a good lot of liner defining those hard blue eyes but the natural lips were a bit pointless, if you asked me. Made them fade into her chin when a nice bright red would have said, ‘I’m here. Look at me.’ No, I wasn’t a fan of subtlety. Not that you’d notice.
The leaf popped over on to the step and was picked up by a breeze. MT took in a deep breath and breathed it out with a new briskness, lifting her head and meeting my eyes boldly. ‘But, you know, life goes on. I didn’t know Seth that well and I’ve got a lot on my plate at the moment. Can’t you—’
‘Yes, of course. We’ll be very quick, thank you,’ I said, and propelled the bulk of my body past Sam, setting myself right on course for a boob-to-boob collision with MT. An uncomfortable collision that could be easily averted if she backed down and retreated into the hallway. Which she did, pretty instantly.
Except it turned out not to be a hallway. The front door opened straight on to a modestly furnished living room.
‘I don’t know what help I can be,’ MT said, almost by way of protest, as I marched past and in, casting around for somewhere to park myself.
It was a traditional working-class terraced house with a living-room-cum-diner that led into a small galley kitchen and yard at the back. I reckon if I’d met her outside of it, like a long way outside of it, not just on the doorstep, I might have expected her living accommodation to be a little more high end. This place felt like it was mismatched with the owner of those immaculate shining locks and camel coat.
At the same time I was aware that although the world of London restaurants might sound like a glamorous vocation, a lot of workers, especially the ones that had families to support, would often have to claim extra income support and credits just to get by. Catering and hospitality wasn’t an industry known for its astronomic pay. Unless you got right to the top. Yes, chef.
There were some obvious signs that MT was sharing her living accommodation with others: over the back of one of the sofas were heaped jumpers and cardigans, (different sizes, I noted), a football trophy stood proudly on the mantelpiece and a woman in a tracksuit was lounging lengthways on the sofa watching TV. Ain’t no flies on me.
It was only when I stood in front of her, coughed and said ‘hello’ that the lounger heaved her eyes away from the screen and smiled wanly. I wondered if she was massively stoned.
‘This is Hannah, one of my flatmates,’ said MT. With reluctance she shut the door thus abandoning all hopes of immediate escape. ‘She’s trying to enjoy her last day of freedom,’ she said, insinuating we were spoiling it, and hung her coat over a stand. ‘School starts again tomorrow.’
‘Hi there,’ said Hannah without interest and returned her eyes to the screen. ‘Sorry to hear about Seth.’ She picked up the remote and turned the volume down, but only a bit. There was an old rerun of something with Angela Lansbury on.
‘You look slightly too cool for school,’ said Sam, trying a polite smile. He was hovering near the sofa weighing up whether it was clean enough for his chinos. There were indeed a lot of stains on it: circular rings from the bottoms of cups, and unidentifiable bits of organic matter that might once have been dinners. A smattering of popcorn crumbs seemed permanently wedged or maybe glued in between the seat cushions.
‘Sorry,’ said Sam, backing away from it. ‘I didn’t mean that impolitely.’
Oblivious to his scrutiny the woman, Hannah, picked up a tumbler of dark brown liquid that was sitting on the carpet and sipped it. ‘I’m a teaching assistant,’ she said.
Well, that explained the strung-out appearance. My friend Cerise had worked in a school once. She didn’t last more than two weeks and spent a fair few days afterwards twitching in her living room, occasionally shouting, ‘Settle down’, to no one in particular. We called it post-traumatic teaching Tourette’s. So I got where this Hannah was coming from and said, ‘Ah right. You have my sympathies,’ then went and sat on the arm of the least grubby piece of furniture in the room before Sam nabbed it. I tried the seat but the stuffing was coming out and I could feel the springs beneath the fabric on my bum, so I nipped up on to the arm. That at least appeared relatively clean.
Sam, however, was bravely going for the sofa. He screwed his face up and looked pointedly at Hannah’s sprawling legs. She smiled but didn’t move so he came and sat by me on the other arm of the chair. He looked a bit wounded. In my job I was used to rudeness. Occupational hazard. Sam, however, was, on occasion, surprisingly sensitive.
MT clapped her hands. ‘Okay, then let’s get to it,’ she said, and went and stood in the middle of the room. ‘What are you after?’
It was kind of weird, her standing there while the rest of us had chosen a seat but, as homeowner, it was her prerogative. Maybe she preferred lording it over everyone. Or maybe she was just used to it. After all, as a hostess-cum-receptionist she must spend most of her working hours on her feet.
I sent Sam a go-ahead nod.
‘Well,’ he said. ‘We’d really like to hear more about when you saw the La Fleur ghost, please?’
Hannah jerked to attention.
MT began moving backwards slowly until she reached the wall. Then she leant on it. ‘Is that relevant? To Seth’s murder?’ She clutched her throat. The question seemed to have upset her.
Sam nodded. At the same time I said, ‘We don’t know. Just answer the question please.’
A moment passed while MT thought about it. ‘Okay, well I only saw it once.’
Hannah muted the television. ‘Am I hearing this right?’ she said, incredulous. ‘You’ve seen a ghost?’
MT shook her head. Blonde locks tumbled forwards and spilt over her shoulders like a glossy hair waterfall. ‘I wasn’t sure. It was too weird.’ Then she turned back to Sam. ‘I mean it’s not what you expect to see, is it?’
‘Poor you,’ he said. ‘Must have been quite a shock.’
His words were dripping with sympathy. He sure hadn’t been like this with Mary. But then Mary wasn’t a blonde-haired and blue-eyed rake, was she?
‘It was,’ MT admitted. ‘Ghosts in your workplace! It just never happens, does it?’
Sam smiled his crooked smile. ‘Oh, more than you might imagine.’
She responded with some simpering and fl
ashed her teeth. ‘Of course. Your occupation. So silly of me.’
‘Not at all,’ said Sam, with a little manly shake of his shoulders.
It was like I wasn’t in the room at all.
Hannah wasn’t liking it either. She pouted and pointed an accusatory finger at her flatmate. ‘You didn’t tell me! I can’t believe you didn’t tell me. You know I love stuff like that.’ She looked at me and shook her head. ‘She knows I love stuff like that. I’ve got bookshelves on ghosts and UFOs. I love all that.’
MT clicked her tongue. ‘I’m telling you now, aren’t I?’ Then she rolled her eyes at Sam in a ‘save me’ way.
I leant forwards. ‘But you did mention it to your work colleagues, didn’t you?’ I flicked open my notebook. ‘This was at the beginning of February?’
‘That’s right,’ she said, and shifted her eyes away out the window. ‘After it had just happened. I was confused. Upset. Flustered. I needed to talk.’
‘As you would,’ Sam warbled, beside me.
She caught his gaze and sent him another thin grateful smile.
For god’s sake. I cleared my throat and checked my notes. Time to get some speed on this interview. ‘And the sighting took place in the ladies, didn’t it?’
‘Yes.’ MT nodded. ‘It was after a shift.’
‘A what?’ I said, and raised my eyebrows, sensing mischief.
MT narrowed her eyes. ‘A shift.’
‘Oh, a shift,’ I emphasised the ‘F’ and tried to look innocent. ‘Sorry, I misheard.’
Hannah giggled. Sam’s face tightened. He crossed his legs then uncrossed them again.
‘And what happened?’ I went on, keeping my mouth a flat neutral line.
‘I was coming out of the toilets—’
‘After your shiFffft?’
MT pushed her butt off the wall and straightened her narrow shoulders in defiance. ‘After work,’ she said stiffly. ‘I was in the doorway.’
I tapped my notebook with a pen. ‘Of the toilet?’
‘Of the cubicle,’ she said with precision.
‘And what?’ I asked. In my notebook I wrote, toilet cubicle.
‘And this thing brushed past me.’
‘Can you describe it?’ Sam leant forward on his knee. ‘How did it move?’
‘It’s hard to remember.’ MT’s eyes were fixing on him. As she spoke she began twisting a curl. ‘Sort of drifted.’
‘Above the floor?’ Sam asked.
‘Yes,’ she nodded. ‘Above it.’
‘So, MT,’ I said deadpan. ‘Let me get this right. You’re saying that after your shift you encountered a floater?’
There was a moment of impasse, then on the sofa Hannah burst out laughing. Sam sprang off the armchair and caught my arm. ‘Can I have a word with you, Rosie? Now!’ And then he frogmarched me to the front door.
‘What’s got into you?’ We were wedged into the furthest corner of the room.
‘Oh, come on,’ I said. ‘It’s a joke. Literally. You can’t be buying this.’
‘Buying what? She hasn’t got started yet.’ He bent closer to me so I could smell the slight tangy whiff of grapefruit. He must have used my shower gel this morning. I liked that notion. ‘Rosie!’ he snapped. ‘Concentrate! Mary said she saw something there too and you didn’t give her the third degree.’
‘And you didn’t slobber over Mary the way that you’re—’ I stopped myself from finishing that sentence, instantly regretting what I’d given away. It wasn’t like me to be so unguarded.
‘What? What are you talking about? I’m not slobbering. I’m allowing her to talk. In fact, it would be nice if she could get a bloody word in without you making some acerbic comment. You’re the one,’ he said, pointing his finger at my chest, ‘who suggested we should allow subjects to talk without interruption. “Don’t make too many requests for clarification,” you said. “It’s an important technique,” you said.’
It was all true. Clearly some random emotion had queered my pitch. I needed to check it, rein it in and apologise. Which I did promptly.
‘Accepted,’ he said. ‘Now we need to go in and rebuild rapport.’
‘Okay,’ I told him. ‘You continue, then.’
‘You apologise.’
Oh god. I didn’t want to. I might have reacted irrationally against MT’s mild flirtation but there was no need to prostrate myself on the floor. ‘Must I?’
‘You must.’
‘I was only saying—’
‘Apologise.’
Back in the living room MT and Hannah were waiting for us with eager eyes.
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘Nerves. We’re not used to murders. Well, not recent ones.’ I shrugged and tried to laugh.
MT didn’t. Just rotated those crazy ice-blue orbs and bolted them on to my face. For a moment I felt like I was being pulled into an icy lake. Then she cracked a smile and said, ‘It’s okay.’ Which, credit where it’s due, was actually rather gracious. She could have frosted me out. But she didn’t. That was decent.
With her next sentence MT went even further and threw me a conversational olive branch. ‘So, Rosie, how long have you been doing this?’ Again, very nice of her. Considering.
However, the most accurate answer to this question was just over a week. There was no way I was going to let on about that. Any moral high ground would be utterly lost, if there was any left to fight about.
I expertly batted the question over to my partner. ‘It’s been a while now for you, Sam, hasn’t it?’
Back on top of the armchair, Sam nodded like a happy dog. ‘Yes. I’ve been in this area of study pretty much since I was twelve.’ Which surprised all of us.
MT asked him how that had come to be but he shook his head and told us it was a very long and boring story and went back to asking MT about the incident again.
‘Yes,’ she said. She was sitting on the sofa now, next to Hannah, who had turned the telly off and was leaning forwards, hugging her knees, enthralled by the whole thing.
‘It was eerie, you know. One minute she wasn’t there, the next minute she just walked straight past me. All dusty and white, just moving across the space between the sinks and the cubicles, not looking at anything but staring straight ahead. Then she just disappeared into the wall. It was horrible. The strangest thing I’ve ever seen.’
Sam was scratching down some notes. ‘And you say she drifted across the floor?’
‘That’s right.’ MT sent me a wary glance.
I looked out the window and kept my mouth firmly shut.
‘And you were coming out of the doorway, were you?’ Sam went on.
MT nodded.
‘So did you see her when she was approaching? On your right? Or was she in front of you? Did you see her profile? Or her back? What angle was it?’
Briefly the MT’s eyes widened. Then they relaxed as she went into recall. ‘She was in front of me.’
‘Did you see her profile?’
‘No, I don’t think so.’ Then she stopped and said, ‘Actually thinking about it now, I think she had a long, sharp, bony nose.’
‘Oh,’ said Sam. ‘That’s good. Helpful.’
While he was noting that down, I asked, ‘What was she wearing? Do you remember?’
‘Yes.’ MT nodded, hair rustling all about. ‘An old-fashioned dress with a big full skirt. And a bonnet.’
Sam looked at me. Same as Mary. ‘And this definitely wasn’t a real person dressed up?’ I went on.
MT shook her head. Hannah smiled. ‘This is so cool.’
Sam scribbled something else in his notebook. ‘What made you think it was a ghost?’
MT pushed a hand through her hair and sat back into the sofa. ‘I knew the place was haunted,’ she said.
Hannah looked pissed off. ‘You so should have told me.’
‘How did you know that?’ I asked. ‘From Mary?’
MT stared at me a long hard minute, then said, ‘Actually, I heard it from other people.’
&
nbsp; ‘Who?’ I asked and picked up my pen.
‘Some customers.’
‘Really? Can you remember their names?’
She shook her hair out and ran a hand through it on one side. ‘Henry Warren, one of the regulars, may have mentioned it,’ she said slowly, as if she were delving deep into her memory. I wrote it down.
‘And the staff, obviously,’ she went on and then paused. ‘Hang on, it actually might have been Seth, who told me that Henry had told him?’ She chucked her chin. ‘Or maybe Henry told me that Seth had spoken to him about it. Yes, I think that was the right way round.’
‘Anyone else?’
‘Not to my knowledge.’
‘Thank you,’ said Sam again. ‘And I wanted to ask about the night of the writing on the wall.’
‘Oh, yes.’ MT straightened her pencil skirt.
‘Can you tell me what happened? In your own words.’
‘Actually, I can’t,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t in that night. Off sick with flu.’
A mobile somewhere in the room began to buzz. MT fished around in her handbag and muted the ring. I guessed it was her lunch date wondering where she was. ‘That’s all I know, really,’ she said, and put the phone on the arm of the sofa, face down.
Her fingers inched to her knee and tapped it three times. ‘Well, if you’ve got no more questions?’
Sam flipped his notebook shut and put it in his bag. ‘You’ve been very helpful. Thank you for seeing us, MT. We may need to talk to you again sometime.’
I doubted we’d need to do that – she been helpful enough but not earth-shattering quite frankly.
‘Of course,’ she said, and stood up. ‘Okay, then. Well, I’ve got to dash. Hannah can see you out, can’t you, H?’
Hannah mumbled something while MT grabbed her coat. In a blink of an eye, the door slammed, the letterbox rattled and MT was gone.
‘She’s always like that,’ said Hannah. ‘Rushing off from one thing to another. Don’t take it personally.’
I grunted. Sam said, ‘Of course not. Busy woman.’
‘Now,’ Hannah clapped her hands together and smiled. There was a worrying glint in her eye. ‘How ’bout you tell me all about your job. Sounds fascinating.’