Ghosts Know (24 page)

Paula takes her time over turning back to me, as if she’s anxious not to disturb her stiffened coiffure. “They’ve agreed upstairs,” she says, “we should give you time off till the situation is resolved.”

‘Agreed with whom?” When her face stays as immobile as her hair I protest “I thought you said you were speaking for them.”

“They’re agreeing with the
Clarion.”

“It’s a victory for the little people, is it?” Just too late I realise this sounds like a gibe at her height. While I don’t much care, I do her the favour of adding “The local rag against the firm that owns the world, I mean.”

“It isn’t like that, Graham.” Paula hesitates and says “It isn’t public yet, but Frugo have acquired the newspaper chain.”

“Is there anyone they haven’t bought?” Several people in the newsroom look no less appalled than I feel; they’re staring in disbelief towards the studio, presumably having guessed that Paula’s here to oust me once again. When she stays as mute as the windows make my colleagues, I say “Then I’ll just have to see if the BBC’s still interested.”

Paula shakes her head, which doesn’t stir a hair. “Leave yourself a little dignity, Graham.”

“Is that what you think you’re doing?” Just as furiously I demand “What are you trying to say?”

‘We know they’ve withdrawn their offer.”

The stares of the staff in the newsroom might be expressing my reaction. “Who told you that, mav I ask?”

“Your friend there did.”

Paula has turned to stare into the newsroom, where Christine has reappeared with Trevor. “Christine,” I hiss in a voice that makes my teeth ache.

“Not her. Don’t go attacking her.” Paula faces me and says “Hannah Leatherhead. She was in the Dressing Room when I had lunch with Dominic and Meryl.”

“Bitch.” I don’t care who Paula thinks I mean. Christine has been intercepted by someone at the far end of the newsroom, but now she and Trevor put on speed. As they reach the control room I say “Here’s Trevor to the rescue. If he’s taking over for a while he’ll have to get a personality of his own.”

Christine yanks open the studio door and gives Paula a wary look. “Graham,” she blurts, “you’re live.”

Paula stares wide-eyed at me and opens her mouth as though she’s miming silence. I don’t know whether the headphones knocked the switch on the console out of position; perhaps it lodged against a crumpled fragment of newspaper. I’m barely able to contain my mirth—I’ve no idea what kind. “Well, there you are, everyone,” I say to the microphone. “No secrets on this show.”

I blunder out past Trevor, who steps well aside as if he fears I mean to thump or otherwise mistreat him. Many of my colleagues are watching to see what I’ll do. My rage sends me to grab the phone on my desk. As soon as I’m through to the police I say “I want to tell you who killed Kylie Goodchild.”

I’ve found my keys at last—they’re lodged beneath the computer monitor like a secret I was trying to keep from myself-—when the doorbell gives a single trill. Its abruptness sounds authoritative, as though I can’t avoid admitting the caller, not that I want to put off the interview. I hurry down the hall, only for the intercom to say “It’s just me without my keys.”

I thumb the button to let Christine in. I needn’t have borrowed all of her keys this morning; it feels as though I’ve forced her to come to my flat because she can’t get into her own. From her tone she might have been apologising because she isn’t the police. I don’t know whether I would have preferred to talk to them while she wasn’t here—no, why would I? I stare into the flattened eyes of Robert Mitchum’s preacher until her footsteps come upstairs, and then I open the door. “Oh, Graham,” she says.

Presumably that means more to her than it does to me, and I do my best to find a joke. “Even I’d have to call that inconclusive.”

“I didn’t know this was supposed to be a test.”

“Let’s say we’ve both passed,” I say and shut the door.

Nobody speaks again until we’re seated in the main room, where the computer and the television put me pointlessly in mind of Kessler’s polygraph. “Have you been working on your novel?” Christine hopes aloud.

“No, I’ve been looking for my keys.”

“At least you’ll have the time now if that’s what you want to do.” She seems to wish we were on the couch instead of facing each other across the room. “And maybe you’re better out of Waves,” she says.

“You aren’t.”

“I was let off the lecture, though. Paula couldn’t blame me when she’d sent me to fetch Trevor. She was ranting at everyone in the newsroom for not warning her you were both on the air. She wanted anybody who’d been listening to you to own up, but do you think they did? I’ve never seen her lose her temper before. You don’t really know what people are like until they lose control.” Christine pauses not quite long enough for me to speak, and almost seems to be interrupting herself. “What are you going to tell the police?”

I’m taking a breath when the doorbell rings, an even terser trill than hers was. As I make for the hall a doubt stirs somewhere deep in me; it feels unreasonably like the twitching of a polygraph. I haven’t identified whatever is troubling me by the time I have to say “Hello?”

“Graham Wilde.”

“Nobody else but.” Christine can be a surprise and if necessary a witness as well, because I’ve recognised the voice. “Come right up,” I tell him.

He brings more footsteps upstairs with him. He’s Lippy Linley, and he is indeed accompanied by Beaky Rudd. Neither of them seems to want to show me an expression just now. As I lead the way along the hall I find Christine waiting at the end. I could imagine she’s keeping an eye on my behaviour, although she says “Would anyone like a drink?”

“We don’t need one,” Linley says.

Nor do I, and in any case she wouldn’t have meant anything alcoholic. “Can we have your name?” says Rudd.

“Christine Ellis. I’m Graham’s producer.”

“Are you?” Rudd sits on the couch as if to ensure I can’t share it with her, and then he says “Still?”

I head off Christine’s answer but just some of my rage. “What makes you ask that?”

“Haven’t you been taken off?” Linley asks as he settles in an armchair.

“Only till his name is cleared,” Christine retorts. “I hope you’ll be helping.”

“You’ve been listening to my show, have you?”

“We wouldn’t miss it,” Rudd assures me.

“We’ve been fans for weeks,” says his partner.

They sound far too much like a comedy team—one that doesn’t care whether I appreciate the joke. I mustn’t be provoked, and I concentrate
on offering Christine the other armchair. When she mimes giving it to me I take it and wait while she sits on the arm. Both policemen frown, perhaps only at the delay, but Christine must assume they don’t want her so close to me. She brings a scrawny chair from the kitchen and perches on it, propping her elbows on its back and clasping her hands to support her intent face. “Are you ready to talk now, Mr Wilde?” says Rudd.

“I wanted to be sure before I said anything. I wouldn’t be surprised if you’ve reached the same conclusion as me.”

“Try us,” Rudd says and lifts his head as if he’s readying his long sharp nose for a scent.

“I think Kylie Goodchild’s boyfriend killed her. I believe he’s already known to you.”

Linley parts his outstanding lips with a small sticky sound. “Why do you say that?’”

“He’s been terrorising his neighbourhood, him and his gang. He has a dog called Killer I’m told isn’t far from illegal. He killed another boy’s dog with it and that was reported to the police. He uses drugs and mixes them with alcohol, which I’m sure is helping make him how he is. The way I hear it, those aren’t his only problems with the law. It might be worth investigating what he gets up to at school.”

Rudd is keeping his nose high. “You’ve been doing quite a lot of that, Mr Wilde.”

“I’m a journalist.” Now I know what was troubling me—I didn’t tell Christine about the enquiries I made. I give her an apologetic look while saying “I wanted to be sure before I made a statement.”

Rudd’s partner makes his mouthy sound again. “What would you say was your interest in him?”

“Because he’s obsessed with me. You’d do better asking why that is.”

Linley has left his mouth open. “I was asking why you’re accusing him.”

“I’m sure I know his motive.”

Do I glimpse Rudd’s nostrils twitching at this? “So tell us,” he says.

“I believe he was jealous of me.”

I don’t look at Christine, whom I’ve begun to find as distracting as the reflection of the polygraph. “Why would he have been jealous?” says Rudd.

“Of whatever she felt about me.”

“What are you saying that might have been, Mr Wilde?”

“Maybe nothing we’d call much if even anything, but the point is how it seemed to him. You can tell that from his behaviour on my programme for a start.”

“Remind us,” Linley says.

“The station manager had to call security and have him escorted out of the building”

“Why are you saying he caused a scene?”

“He saw the photo I’d signed for his girlfriend. I’m sure you’ll have seen it yourselves. There’s nothing on it I wouldn’t have written to any member of the public. It just told her to have a good life.”

“It’s a pity she didn’t get it,” Rudd remarks, and Linley says “Why should he have reacted badly to that?”

“At the time I thought he’d fallen for the trick. Frankie Jasper tried to make everyone believe the photo had led him to me before he’d seen it, but I’ll stake my reputation he already had.” For a moment my conviction wavers like a line on a polygraph, and then my rage steadies it. “Anyway, forget him. The way the boyfriend’s acted since, I think he’d go for anyone he thought had even a passing acquaintance with her.”

Linley has a question, but I haven’t finished. “Or maybe it’s something else,” I want to establish. “Maybe he’s doing his best to make people believe I had something to do with her death so they won’t look too closely at him. Maybe he thinks accusing me will persuade people he’s innocent.”

When I hold up my open hands Linley says “How are you saying he’s behaved since?”

“He went for Graham at Kylie Goodchild’s funeral,” Christine says.

“He attacked him, you mean.”

“He did verbally. He looked as if he wanted to do worse.”

Rudd points his nose at her as a preamble to asking “Did you report the incident?”

“We definitely did. I’d have thought you’d know.”

“I may have made less of it than I could have,” I interrupt for fear she’ll antagonise them. “Another time he waited for me outside the radio station and followed me by the canal.”

Linley’s lips make such a noise I could imagine he’s smacking them. “What were you doing down there?”

“Walking like a lot of people do. More since I’ve started working on a novel.” My fury at his question almost makes me lose control, but I mustn’t let Christine suspect I’ve kept the secret for so long, and I add “I started it this month.”

“I’m trying to establish why you chose to go down there with him. Wouldn’t it have been advisable to stay somewhere more public?”

“I don’t think he’s much of a threat to me. I’m not a teenage girl.” When the policemen gaze at me I say “I think she came to Waves that night to warn me about him. He must have chased her away unless she meant to hide from him by the canal. He caught up with her, and they’re bound to have had an argument, and who knows what she may have said that made him lash out. I’m not saying it was murder. Maybe he just lost control.”

“You think this happened,” Linley says, “after Kylie Goodchild tried to see you again at your place of work.”

His last phrase sounds ironic if not worse, but I mustn’t let anger distract me. “There’s no doubt of that, is there?”

“Then I have to tell you it couldn’t have been her boyfriend.”

Linley’s face grows blank before I can interpret his expression, and I’m left just with my anger. “Who says so?”

“His stepfather would for one,” says Rudd.

“Can you really trust someone like him?”

“That doesn’t fit your image, Mr Wilde. On your show you don’t want to sound prejudiced.”

“And by God I’m not. I’d no idea he’s whatever you’re saying he is. I meant the neighbours think he’s a bad lot as well, and one of the reasons Wayne acts how he does. Just for the record, it was an Asian who said so. Are you honestly taking the word of a criminal?”

Rudd gazes hard and blankly at me before saying “It wasn’t just his stepfather.”

I wonder if he’s requiring me to ask, but Linley takes the cue. “They were with us,” he says. “With the police.”

“When?” This sounds too close to skepticism, and so I demand “How long?”

“Several hours, Mr Wilde.”

“And what was it about?”

“I’m sure you know we’re not at liberty to discuss it,” says Rudd. “We’d received an anonymous call that may have been from a neighbour.”

“Then the witness must have been wrong. Not the one who called you about them, whoever told you what time Kylie was trying to get into
Waves. The autopsy couldn’t have been too precise about the time of death, could it? She must have been killed after you let Wayne go or before you brought him in.”

“You’re a bit determined to pin it on him.”

“I just want the killer to be dealt with as he should be. Don’t you?”

No doubt there are questions it would have been wiser to put to the police. After a pause that gives me time to sense Christine’s concern Linley says “Can you tell us why a girl like Kylie Goodchild would even have known about you? Your programme wasn’t meant for people of her age.”

“It was meant for anyone who liked to listen to it.” Instead of growing angrier I try to think aloud. “Maybe her mother did. Maybe Kylie liked it because I disagreed with the likes of Wayne. If as you say his stepfather is a different colour, maybe Wayne objects to that. She wouldn’t have, would she? Not with the kind of poem she wrote.”

Once he’s sure I’ve finished Linley stands up, and Rudd does. “Thank you, Mr Wilde,” Rudd says. “That’s all for now.”

Perhaps Christine feels overlooked. As they make for the hall she says “Can I ask something? You don’t believe in lie detectors, do you?”