Pretty Little Dead Things (10 page)

  I saw her as I entered the rotating glass doors. She was standing in the foyer next to a cheap potted plant, a few steps away from a circular sofa occupied by four or five women in skirts so short I could see the meat of their thighs as they crossed and uncrossed their legs. Ellen waved as I made my way across the open space towards her, the other hand going up to push her hair behind one ear.

  She looked good, as if the years had never passed. She had cut her hair short and lost some weight – rather than curvaceous, she now looked tanned and athletic, as if she worked out a lot. She was wearing a simple black dress with a thin, long-sleeved cardigan over the top. It was attractive but not overtly sexy, and I wondered how long she had agonised over which outfit to choose.

  The women on the sofa were speaking in what sounded like Russian or Polish – an eastern European language I could not quite place but had heard recently in the little room above Baz Singh's club. One of the women laughed and the sound was so shrill that it hurt my ears. One of her companions slapped her thigh.

  "Thomas." Ellen's voice held the slight tinge of an American accent, which was to be expected as she'd spent so long in that country. It made her sound like a different person, someone I didn't really know. The nerves increased, and I lost my footing on the carpeted floor, almost stumbling into her.

  "Hello, Ellen. It's nice to see you." I held out a hand, then pulled it back and leaned in for a quick embrace. She kissed my cheek. Her lips felt like silk; her skin smelled of lemon.

  "You too, Thomas. You look good – if a little on the skinny side." She smiled: a flash of pure-white dentist-cleaned teeth in her smooth, brown face. I wondered if she used Botox. Her cheeks were taut yet strangely puffy. Then I realised that she had been crying.

  "I've lost some weight recently. Stress: the best diet in the world." She linked my arm and dragged me towards the bar, her feet gliding across the floor as if she were dancing.

  The bar area was empty, so Ellen grabbed a table while I ordered the drinks. She was drinking white wine and soda, while I stuck with the whisky. I moved back across the room, hanging onto the drinks, and lowered myself into the chair opposite.

  "Thanks. I need this," she said, grabbing her glass and swallowing a mouthful of drink. "God, when I said you looked thin I meant it. What have you been up to?"

  I considered lying to her, but she knew what I did for a living so any level of dishonesty would only have insulted her. "I had a very bad experience about a year ago, and it left me in a bit of a state. I lost weight, lost focus, and I'm only just getting back on track."

  Ellen's hand strayed across the damp tabletop, as if of its own volition. By the time she realised what the hand was doing, it had already grasped my arm. "Really? Was it that bad? Are you okay now? I mean, really? Are you okay?" her eyes widened, and within them I saw a strange light that I had not witnessed for a very long time. The luminescence caused by someone who cares, a person with whom I had a strong connection – a person that was still alive.

  I nodded my head. "Yes. Yes, I think so. It was bad for a while, but I think I'm back on track now. I… I haven't been using my ability." I had never been comfortable with that word, but what else could I call it? "I've been moving in what you might call mortal circles for quite some time now, but it's isn't that simple."

  "What do you mean?" Her mouth was a hollow circle; her eyes glowed.

  "The dead always want me back." I smiled, finished my drink.

  "Jesus, Thomas, you always were such a fun date." A smile tugged at the corners of her mouth, uncertain yet wanting to come out into the open. I laughed lightly, giving it permission to come forth, and Ellen took her hand away from my arm and grinned.

  Despite my levity, I felt anything but at ease. Although I had intimated that something major had happened, I knew that I would never actually tell Ellen about the events that had shaken me so much that I had tried to block out the dead. In truth, there wasn't that much to tell. It involved an old, supposedly lost piece of film, a late night meeting between government representatives, the scientific community, and a woman who had attended in the name of the church. None of them had survived that night; I was the only one left alive. Nothing tangible had actually occurred, but madness and death had been the result of us viewing that film. Everyone but me had seen something on the screen: the living, the dead, or the exalted; the end of the world and the beginning of something else. All I had witnessed was a blank space, an empty screen, despite being there only because I'd thought I might just catch a glimpse of my wife and daughter in the footage. All that remained was an acute sense of disappointment and the feeling that I had inadvertently opened myself up to something, some darkness at the edge of the world.

  "So," I said, pulling my thoughts away from the memory of that night. "How have you been? Things still going well with the job?"

  Ellen placed her glass on a paper beer mat and scratched her nose. "Yes, it's great. I've been working with trainee astronauts, of all people. Getting them in shape, testing their bodies for the effects of anti-gravity and other imposed forces. It's interesting work. Despite having very little funding these days, the space programme is still developing new technologies."

  "Ah," I said. "It's a long way from a grotty little GP's surgery in Horsforth."

  We continued with this kind of small talk, saying too much while not really saying much of anything at all. You know how it is when you meet up with an old lover; the air between you is swimming with things you cannot name and the words you speak, however banal they may at first seem, are always loaded with an additional emotional weight, a resonance that even casual onlookers are able to observe.

  Since our initial exchange, I could sense that Ellen was deliberately keeping the conversation away from my ability and the way I made my money. She had never been able to fully comprehend the extent of what I could do, and even though she had been instrumental in my acceptance of my own unique view of the world, I still did not know if she fully believed what I was capable of.

  Despite her intimate knowledge, Ellen barely knew anything at all.

  "How about you take me to that Italian place you mentioned? I could murder a nice big bowl of pasta." She stood, picking up her handbag from the table.

  "I'm sure that's not a term they use in the States. You can take the girl out of Yorkshire…"

"Oh, shut up, you twat," she said, sticking out her tongue.

  When we left the hotel the women from the circular sofa were still there, but one of them was leading a fat man in an expensive suit towards the stairs. The man's hand strayed to her buttocks, his fingers splayed across the tight material of her short skirt. I wondered, briefly, if the women knew Baz Singh.

  We crossed the road at the lights and I led her down a side street. Bins overflowed with fast food waste, a small black cat hissed at us from a high concrete step before a closed metal door, and something skittered in the shadows of a recessed parking space cordoned off by a stout padlocked chain.

  "Lovely Leeds," said Ellen, leaning into me as we stepped onto the main street.

  "Nothing like California, eh? With all those gangland driveby shootings, plastic TV stars and steroid-chomping muscle men in tight little DayGlo shorts."

  A group of young men crossed the road and lurched into our path, jostling me as we brushed shoulders with them. They laughed as I stumbled off the kerb, and one of them stared at me as if he wanted to hit me. I smelled booze in the air and broke eye contact. The dead I can deal with, but as far as the living are concerned I have never been what anyone might call a tough guy.

  "Assholes," muttered Ellen, tightening her grip on my arm.

  The restaurant was called
La Tosca
, and was situated in the basement of an old building that had once been some kind of financial institution but now served as business units for small companies and one-man-band financial advisors. We ducked beneath the awning, glancing up at a sky that threatened rain but didn't quite seem up to the challenge, and entered the darkened space.

  The place was only half full, which meant that we got to choose a seat in the window – which, being a basement window gave us only a view of the stubby retaining wall and some fancy cast iron railings. Still, it was a nice place, and the food was never less than excellent. I ordered a nice bottle of red wine and we sipped it as we perused the menu, our attentive waiter standing quietly off to one side.

  "What are you having?" Ellen glanced at me over the top of her menu, her blue eyes darkening a shade in the dim, cramped room.

  "Are we having starters?"

  She nodded, her smile hidden by the cardboard rectangle upon which was painted a bunch of grapes and a wine bottle. "I'm starving. Missed lunch because I had a meeting."

  I glanced at her. "Anything important?" Her dark eyes darkened further still, and I wished that I'd kept my mouth shut.

  "I'll tell you later. I don't want to spoil the food." She ducked her head behind the menu and I ran my eyes across the lines of Italian recipes, my hunger abating.

  I had a bruschetta starter followed by a simple peasant's pasta dish of tagliatelle, vine tomatoes and garlic. Ellen started with a tuna and bean salad and her main course was something with chicken – I can't recall exactly what, but it certainly sounded tasty.

  We ate in silence for a while, and when the main courses arrived I observed that Ellen's eyes were moist. She'd clearly been crying before we met – I'd noticed that immediately back in the hotel foyer – but nothing had been said or done since that moment to prompt such an emotional response.

  "My super-ghost senses tell me that all is not right in the world of Ellen Lang." I set down my cutlery, leaned across the table and rested my hand on her wrist. She hadn't taken a bite for several minutes; her hand remained immobile at the side of her plate.

  "I didn't want to go into this here, while we were eating, but something major has happened and I really don't know who else to turn to."

  I squeezed her wrist and took my hand away, giving her some space. "We're old friends, Ellen. God knows, I owe you a lot more than I could ever repay… which means that I'll do anything I can to help you, whatever's going on."

  She sighed, lightly, and put down her fork. Then she took a huge swallow of wine, almost emptying the glass. I topped her up and waited.

  "Have you seen the news lately, Thomas?" It was the second time she had asked me the same question in less than twentyfour hours.

  My mind flashed on the images of the dead girls, the ones whose ghosts were even now hanging in my home. "A bit. Not much, though. I'm working on something that seems to be taking up a lot of my time." I thought it a pretty good answer under the circumstances; it didn't let on too much of anything. Not that there was much to let on anyway.

  "I never really told you where I grew up, did I? Just that I was a local girl, Leeds born and bred." Her eyes glimmered.

  "No, you never told me. I don't think it ever came up in conversation. You don't know the street where I lived as a boy, either."

  She nodded, her mouth a thin line bisecting her face. "Well, I was born on the Bestwick Estate. You look surprised."

  "No," I said. "Well, perhaps a little." I smiled, not wanting to give her an excuse to stop what she was trying to say.

  "Well, my parents were poor – the whole family was, actually. But dad worked day and night, all kinds of terrible shifts, just to put me through medical school. It was a hell of a financial strain. I still have family there, on that horrible estate. It's much worse now than it ever was when I was a girl, but it was always rough."

  I waited, uncertain if she wanted me to comment or was merely pausing for breath.

  "You might have seen on the news today that a young girl has gone missing, a nine year-old called Penny Royale. Well, Penny is my cousin Shawna's kid, and they're all distraught. The whole family. "

  I waited for the distant sound of a hammer falling but it didn't come. The news was relatively shocking, but I'd always known that certain members of Ellen's family were not exactly upstanding members of society. One of her brothers had served time for manslaughter when he was nineteen, and an uncle once robbed a post office in Manchester.

  "Anything to say?" She blinked slowly, her eyes still moist but her face more relaxed, as if by simply unburdening herself of this narrative she had found some kind of solace.

  "I did see that news story, and to be honest it barely registered on my consciousness. I thought it was just another missing child. It's a sad indictment of modern society, the fact that I can even dismiss it in that way, but that's what I did. Have the police been any help?"

  "Not much. Oh, they're trying their best, I'm sure, but in a situation like this people's expectations and the limitations of the authorities rarely correlate. I spent this afternoon out there, at Bestwick, trying to console our Shawna. It was an impossible task, and left me worn out. I almost didn't come this evening, but I knew that if I spoke to you, of all people, I'd feel better."

  Was she admitting that she was using me as an emotional support, or did her words represent some kind of backhanded compliment? I was so unused to social relationships that I had no clue. All I could do was wing it and hope for the best. "I'll take that as a compliment." I smiled.

  "It was meant as one. Pudding?" The non sequitur stunned me for a moment, and then I realised that once again our waiter was hovering, dessert menus clutched in his hand.