A Private Haunting (9 page)

Again, Jonas looked down at his basket as the queue shuffled along. A loaf of brown bread, half a dozen free-range eggs and a packet of breaded ham. And three bags of beef Space Raiders.

The Space Raiders jarred. He wondered if people were staring at his corn snacks. They might be disgusted, I mean,
Space Raiders
? And was beef a more appropriate flavour than pickled onion? Then again, it was the Space Raiders themselves that were the issue. This was a time for
gravity
and they were too whimsical a crisp. They didn't know he didn't even have a TV, they just saw happy-go-lucky snack-munching as he watched the 24 hour news.

There was a commotion behind him. A tubby woman in a blue jumpsuit with a large sunflower motif had knocked over a display of chocolate digestives. She tittered and very loudly said
no use crying
over broken biscuits!
People turned away again but all were listening. She started a conversation with the old man behind her, saying it was
such a beautiful day, a good
day for the race.
When the old man asked
what
race
she said
the human race
.

The queue collectively tensed. No one was interested in Jonas's Space Raiders anymore. Someone tutted and the woman in front of him turned and looked back at Jumpsuit Joker.

‘Have a bit of respect.'

The smile froze on the woman's face. ‘I beg your pardon.'

‘For Lacey.'

‘I'm sorry but I don't – '

‘The girl that's disappeared.' She held up a copy of
The Sun
, a front-page picture of a smiling Lacey.

‘Oh. Oh no. I didn't know!'

The old man beside her looked dumbfounded,
did you not
see the TV appeal yesterday? Lacey Lewis. Her poor mum
was in pieces, no sign of the dad but what
do you expect?
As Jumpsuit Joker apologised profusely the floodgates opened.
You just never,
never
know
, said someone.
I
moved from London to get away from all this
, said another. Jonas listened, caught a couple of eyes and mumbled something for the sake of
taking part
, in case they turned on him too. He was unsettled by a gleam in the eyes, like a restrained thrill at being in the centre of a sensation. When he left the shop the queue was still speculating, refreshed by new arrivals.
Her
mother was a mess to begin with… Did you hear
about the police briefing… I hope they string the bastard
up… they found her purse in the park, it looks
bad…

That was the one that stuck.
They found her
purse in the park
… Jonas saw her. Running in the darkness. Dropping her purse. He closed the door and leaned back, eyes closed. Upstairs he could hear the shower. The mail dropping through the letter box made him jump.

Just the mail.

Nothing unusual was happening in the world.

Just a stranger having a shower.

After a while the shower stopped. Jonas tensed, remembering Fletcher's hands on his throat that morning. He took a few steps towards the stairs, listening intently, like the night before.

 

It was way past midnight. Jonas had been standing outside the door of the spare room for a long time, sure that the stranger was on the other side in mirrored pose, listening to Jonas listening to him.

It was ludicrous. To be crouched in his boxers in the pitch dark with his ear to a closed door. He crept back to bed with the same uncertainty as when he first stood in End Point, a tense waiting for something that faded with each day it never came. Except now it had.

After one, the stranger began to snore, belly-deep snores of the contented sleeper. It took a long time but Jonas managed to force him away. As soon as he did Lacey came. He lay in the darkness, thinking of the tabloids about to explode, all that
read between the lines
voyeurism. What had gone through her mind? Maybe, somehow, it had all been quite peaceful.

He realised the stranger had stopped snoring and sat up quickly, braced for bedroom invasion. Or maybe he'd left the house and gone to the police. But Lacey was priority one, they'd just ignore the guy babbling on about a squatter. Fletcher would have to give up and leave.

Lacey put her hands on her hips, she wasn't happy with this switch of the subject. Jonas made himself think of her mother. Susan, he remembered, or maybe Sue: sad eyes, hair dried to straw by too much peroxide. He pictured the TV appeal. Susan overly made-up or completely plain, stripped to her blackheads. Either way, she'd have got it wrong, judgement following, the viewers scouring her words and behaviour for explanation, as if culpability could be gleaned from an ill-considered decision to wear red lipstick for the cameras.

No one could get that right. You could understand it. Too many cynical memories of tearful parental appeals followed by an arrest three days later. He imagined his own parents. His father dignified but strained. And his mother silent, there but not there, as when Jonas would creep downstairs to watch her sitting in the dark, tiny in her big fluffy dressing gown, wondering why she did this, stared into space, something out there only she could see.

At least Jonas could picture his parents turning up to
make
the damn appeal. When Axel ran away to Aegir's Isle his parents didn't bother. No press conference in an over-lit room. Perhaps the police realised that the furious face of Axel's father was unlikely to bring the lost lad a-running. He came round to Jonas's house, stagger-drunk at midday, moaning about
missing shifts to look
for that little bastard and when I find him I'
ll put him through the wall
.

Axel lasted four nights before his tinned food ran out and his uselessness with a rod caught up. He went home and Jonas didn't see him for weeks, the bruises still visible when he did.

Poor Axel. His bruised face slowly pixillated, Jonas falling into a jumpy half-sleep full of faces and voices he couldn't make out. Then a gunshot. He sat bolt upright but realised it was the slam of a door. It was just after five. For a long moment there was silence and he was sure Fletcher was just outside his room. Then footsteps, going down the stairs. Jonas let himself breathe but still tiptoed to the bathroom. A sound from the garden made him peer out the window.

Fletcher was standing in the middle of the lawn with his back to the house. Over and over he slowly pulled his outstretched arms towards himself with steady, noisy breaths, through the teeth like a hissing animal. He was wearing nothing but a pair of white briefs, which disappeared into the crack of his arse when he dropped into a series of rapid press-ups.

Jonas sat down on the toilet. He watched the bright morning sun glinting off the bath taps, the stranger's hiss-hissing drifting in with the birdsong. Here it was, another day in paradise.

Then anger, up like a flare, replacing the incredulity. In a few moments Jonas was across the landing and in Fletcher's room, except it wasn't
his
room, it was Jonas's and these belongings had no place in this space. A sand-coloured rucksack had been propped against the wall, stitched-on battalion patches he had seen on news reports; soldiers with sunglasses, soldiers kicking down doors, soldiers on alert in dusty, God-forsaken desert villages.

Although God was surely with Fletcher. Beside the neatly rolled sleeping mat and folded trousers was a leather-bound Bible. The marker was at Deuteronomy: 22 and Jonas scanned the page until
if a man is found lying with the wife of
another man then they both shall die.
He thought about Mary, the stranger some Old Testament absolutist come to warn and –

‘It's a lot of nonsense, eh?'

Jonas spun round. Fletcher stood in the doorway sweating. He was holding the one-eyed doll.

‘The
Bible
. It's not mine, by the way. My aunt's. This is what she left me when she died. How about that, the last action of a true psychopath. What about you? You a believer?'

‘No.'

‘Maybe it'll come.' He moved past Jonas and put the doll beside his rucksack.

‘I take it you're leaving today.'

Fletcher scratched his beard and smiled. ‘What did you do back in Norway? Stand-up comedy?'

Jonas felt suddenly un-tethered, a kite, further and further away, now a speck in the distance.

‘Comes a time, amigo,' the stranger continued.

‘I want them checked.' And aware of the slight edge of panic in his voice, a breathlessness.

‘Say what?'

‘Those papers. How do I know you are who you say you are? Adam Fletcher. You could be anyone. You could have made it all up. How do I know you didn't steal them? Or forge them?'

‘Forge them? Seriously?'

‘Seriously.'

‘This isn't your house! You want me to drag you round to the police station?'

‘No.'

‘Then why don't – '

‘I've been here for seven years, this is my home!'

‘No. It's my home.' Fletcher rummaged in the rucksack and brought out the envelope. ‘You saw that. You want to read it again? I mean, you're Norwegian, can you not read English?'

‘Just do it then.' Out it popped. Unbidden, but the feeling of defeat was so sudden.

‘Do what?'

‘Get the police.'

‘You really want that?'

‘Of course I don't.'

Fletcher stared at him, wild-eyed. ‘
Fuck's
sake!'

And Jonas suddenly wondered about the police, decided to say it. ‘Why haven't you gone to them already?'

Fletcher looked to the ceiling and shook his head.

‘Don't you want to? What's your story?'

Then Fletcher's hand was on his throat. ‘Why the hell did you have to be here? Un... bel...
ievable
.' The grip tightened momentarily before he dropped his hand and Jonas staggered back.

‘You're crazy!'

‘You don't know the half, mate.' Fletcher walked to the window and leaned on the sill, head bowed. ‘No cops. But you're going to leave.' A semi-detached voice, completely sure of itself.

Downstairs, Jonas sat in the sun room. Tightly clasped hands but still the trembling. The house has always been full of him, he thought. The ghost-presence sensed but never seen.

A few minutes later Mark phoned. All breathless
can't believe
it, can't believe it
and the police are holding a briefing at eleven and can you help, make some phone calls, get as many people to the hall as possible? Jonas said sure and immediately left the house, wandering the streets and then the shop, buying things he didn't really need, anything to put it off.

 

The stranger was still moving around upstairs. Jonas stopped listening and took the bag of groceries through to the kitchen. He stared at his mobile, thinking about the people he had to call and made toast instead. When he finished he made some more. And then another two slices.

Eventually, he made the calls, shared speculation he really didn't want to, the same gabbled disbelief over and again, as dream-like as watching the stranger appear in the kitchen, make a cafetière of coffee and then lie sunbathing in the back garden. Red shorts and Ray-Bans.

Twelve calls later Jonas was done. He stared at the screen until the screensaver went black and moved his gaze back to the garden. After a while Fletcher came in and started opening cupboards. Eventually, he found a glass which he filled with water and slowly drank. Both stared. Neither spoke. When Fletcher had drained the glass he went back outside.

Jonas watched him. He thought about the one-eyed doll and why the stranger took it to his room.

And felt sick.

* * *

The Hub's Got Talent
decorations were still up, black drapes and unmoving mirror-balls, a yawning stage and expectant ghost-light, like a mid-afternoon theatre echoing with the last performance.

Over sixty people milled around, subdued as the dimness in the hall. They watched the police and media set up, little clusters with low voices, turning to the rasp of the runners as someone opened the curtains. Some were angry and some disbelieving but most were simply tense, not knowing what reaction was most appropriate and not wanting to get it wrong.

Jonas felt for them. He wasn't a leader, never had been. But a doer, that was different. So he circulated, offering a hand on the shoulder, for comfort, the
Viking
, whom some knew and most didn't, smiling a smile that sought to be reassuring and ignoring the puzzled looks that said
we'
ll talk about you later
and
did you see that,
the way he looked me right in the eye?

 

The police briefed the hall, two detectives behind a table on the stage, a cluster of microphones and three TV cameras tripod-mounted stage left and right, cameramen bent to the lens.

The detectives seemed edgy. Nothing like the tired cops in a TV show. No hint of hangover or existential despair, just two fifty-odd, bank manager-ish men with flat voices that would talk with reassuring mundanity about fixed-term mortgages and self-assessment tax returns. Except it was the finding of Lacey's purse which made this a high-risk enquiry, the ongoing search in the nature park and an appeal for information, however unimportant it may seem.

‘We're very grateful for the community's cooperation,' they said. People glanced around and frowned, like why do you think it would be any different? But maybe it was, in other places.

The detectives finished. Not much to say and little to go on. They seemed apprehensive as they asked for any questions, as if nervous about what odd pose a thousand photographs would catch them in as they bounced from one shouted question to the next.