The Smile of a Ghost (61 page)

Bell plunged her hands into the pockets of her long coat and wafted it tightly across her, turning away and making the candle flames shiver as if the tower itself was shaking.

Lol thought of what he’d learned from Merrily and what he’d read. It made sense: Jonathan Scole watching Bell form an increasingly intimate relationship with the history boy – whom he had introduced to her, whom he’d made a part of his ghost-walk just to get close to the mother who’d rejected him. Rejected him twice, and now…

… Now the final insult: the adoption of a son.

Lol thought about Andy Mumford and his Plascarreg theories. If this was true, then Mumford was sailing dangerously close to the wrong wind.

‘Bell…’

She turned towards him, strands of white-gold hair across one cheek.

‘When exactly did you come to this conclusion?’ Lol asked.

‘I don’t know. Been staring me in the face for… It came to a head last night. I fell. I was walking… in the churchyard, among the yews, and I fell. Hit my head on a root. I was half stunned and suddenly bitterly angry. Everything was falling apart, on this night of all— I decided on impulse to go to his flat and confront him and… and he was drunk. I told him I’d been attacked in the street. He thought… the crass bastard thought I wanted to sleep with him – so like his miserable father. He said he was going to phone your… Mary. So I walked out.’

‘And then Merrily came.’

‘Found me singing under the castle. It’s the only way I stay sane on nights like this. Singing to Marion. Singing “Wee Willie Winkie” to… Anyway, he must have followed us back. He saw me put the… the mandolin case in the yew tree. And then he came back with a crowbar or something and he forced his way in and he took it.’

She bent down and moved the tray of candles to one side. Not much left of some of them now, flames shrinking down into half an inch of hollowing wax. And Lol saw that the tray had not been on the floor itself but on a small black musical-instrument case, which she lifted now and cradled in her arms.

The mandolin case.

She took it to the battlements. It was almost dark now.

‘You’ll have to go soon,’ Bell said. ‘I can’t let the candles burn away.’

‘Bell… it makes no sense.’

‘It’s all the sense there’s ever been,’ she said. ‘I’ve always had what I regarded as a temporary life. All I’m looking for in death is a kind of permanence.’

She was on her feet, the heavy coat hanging open to reveal a long, cream-coloured dress, soiled now with large, conspicuous stains, their colours indeterminate in the candlelight. Standing close to the wall and hugging the mandolin case to her breast, she began singing, in a tremulous little-girl voice.

Sandy Gee was up against the wall of the fat round tower in the Inner Bailey. She had a rubber-covered torch, kept nervously testing its beam on the stonework, having sent one of the uniforms off with a plastic Pepsi bottle, to find a tap.

‘And salt,’ Merrily said.

‘Salt?’

‘Holy water involves salt.’

‘Maybe we should hold it in one of the bloody restaurants,’ Sandy Gee said.

‘I wish we could hold it in there.’ Merrily nodded at the round tower. ‘Plenty of room, and apparently it used to be the medieval chapel of St Mary Magdalene. Not an option, however.’

‘It certainly isn’t. We need to do it now, in that dirty little tower.’

‘Erm, a warning,’ Merrily said. ‘The aim of this is to bring release and create calm. But we don’t know what we’re dealing with. And if there’s any kind of… if you want to call it energy… in there, and the kid’s in a position where she’s very close to a long drop…’

Sandy shone the torch beam into her face. ‘I hope to God you’re not suggesting this might actually have the reverse effect? Longbeach said you knew what you were doing.’

Siân Callaghan-Clarke cleared her throat. ‘Inspector, I think what my colleague is saying is that this is not an exact science.’

‘Or a science at all,’ Merrily said. ‘Perhaps, under cover of the service, you or one of your officers should move closer so that, in the event of any unexpected reaction…’

‘You often get unexpected reactions?’

‘There is no expected reaction,’ Siân said. ‘It’s about faith.’

‘Christ,’ Sandy said.

48

S
AM SAID
, ‘W
AS
that you in the paper?’

‘It’s a lousy picture, isn’t it?’

Merrily was standing in the beam of Sandy’s torch. All she could see of the girl was a silhouette against the opening in the wall. It was cold and damp in here, colder than outside, a rank and clingy cold.

‘Why aren’t you wearing… you know?’

‘I—’

‘Sam, it’s like the police,’ Siân said. ‘Inspector Gee isn’t in uniform either. Inspector Gee and Mrs Watkins… When you reach their level, you don’t have to wear the uniform.’

Merrily glanced at Siân, stone-faced on the fringe of the torch beam.

Wow.

‘How do I…?’ Sam inched back, towards the window. ‘How do I know it’s not a scam? Why you doing it now?’

‘It’s taken a lot of preparation,’ Merrily said. ‘We don’t take it lightly. We’ve had holy water and things to prepare. And I have to walk all around the area, sealing off points of access. We don’t want to let bad things seep through.’

There was silence – and then Sam said, ‘I’m the bad thing.’

‘Who told you that?’

‘She won’t let me sleep,’ Sam said.

‘Who are we talking about, Sam?’

Siân whispered to Merrily, ‘Give me a moment?’

‘OK. Two minutes, Sam? Some final things to organize.’

Around the corner, in the one-time great hall, Siân said, ‘I don’t know if what Nigel managed to elicit from her might help?’

‘Anything might help. I don’t see this as a cosmetic exercise any more.’

‘In which case… Nigel, I think, also became aware that we might be dealing with something unexpected, to which counselling might not provide a complete solution.’

‘He admitted that?’

‘I said, I think he became aware of it.’

‘Ah. Go on.’

‘The Pegler girl was a bully. It’s hardly unknown for someone who is herself subject to emotional bullying to find someone else on whom she can inflict stress. Pegler was taunted by her peers – boys, mostly, I would guess – for being overweight and unattractive. She initially sought solace with Samantha – a slightly younger and somewhat malleable neighbour. But Jemima was a very angry, rather vindictive person, and soon began to control Samantha, making her do things she would not normally have considered at all appropriate behaviour – like experiments with pills and shoplifting. And then, seeing how far she could push it, Jemima lured away Samantha’s boyfriend, with sexual favours, thus enhancing her own power and her superiority.’

‘And then Sam meets Robbie, and, although she might not particularly fancy him, he certainly represents a more innocent, less pressured world. It’s literally a holiday.’

‘But
is
it less pressured?’ Siân said.

‘Robbie’s fallen in love, maybe for the first time – at least the first time with someone who’s not been dead for centuries. And he wants Sam to share his world. Even calling her Marion. That’s pressure.’

‘Our feeling was that Samantha was finding it disquieting to be associated with Marion, the ghost of a young woman who died in a situation of appalling violence. She’s not particularly interested in medieval history – certainly not even close to Robbie’s level of obsession – and when he kept appealing to her to come back to Ludlow, to spend weekends with him, visiting historic remains she… eventually rebuffed him. And then, unfortunately, he died, and she – already feeling horribly guilty – was unwise enough to share her anguish and became the target for personal taunts by her peers at school. And then… all this came to the notice of Jemima Pegler. Did you see the pictures of her?’

‘I saw some party pictures.’

‘Not those. Nigel had a school photo, in which she’s glowering and looks… almost demonic. You know that famous Myra Hindley photograph, with powerfully hypnotic eyes? I would guess that’s the side of Pegler to which Samantha was exposed. The tactic is that, after stealing the boy, Harry, she professes shame and self-hatred, to wheedle her way back into Samantha’s life. Once she’s there, however, she’s worse than ever. We thought that, at one stage, Sam was on the verge of admitting that the girl had been physically assaulting her. She was certainly a violent person, subject to mood swings and severe depression – of which her parents, by the way, were aware. And, in fact…’ Siân moved away into the darkness, ‘she had been receiving medical attention.’

‘She was seeing a psychiatrist?’

‘For a time, Nigel discovered, she’d been prescribed medication – Seroxat, we understand.’

‘Where have I heard of that?’

‘You probably read about it in the papers.’

‘Serotonin?’

‘Increasing serotonin in the brain as an antiodote to depression. Seroxat was given to thousands of children in the UK. It then began to be linked with suicide and self-harm in some of them.’

‘I’m with you.’

‘Nigel’s initial, somewhat superficial suggestion that Jemima Pegler’s suicide was a form of escape from the mundane…’

‘Was bollocks, basically.’

‘Was a premature reaction because he simply wanted to be involved. When he found out more, it became clear that Jemima’s suicide – as the very circumstances, with an overdose of heroin, suggest – was an act of terminal aggression. And it does seem to have been related to this legend of the woman, Marion – who herself committed an act of extreme violence and then killed herself. Exploiting Samantha’s vulnerability to taunts in the wake of Robbie’s death, Jemima sends her distressing material from a suicide website. Samantha, a little unbalanced by now, sends Jemima in return the Internet material she’s received from Robbie relating to Marion – to which Jemima reacts by suggesting that they “leave behind their bodies”, or some such… I’m probably not putting this very well.’

‘You’re putting it brilliantly,’ Merrily said. ‘What we’re looking at, if we go along with it, is Jemmie first attempting to lure Sam into what might be a suicide pact. Maybe bringing along enough heroin for them both, and then, when Sam doesn’t turn up…’

‘We can’t know what was going through her head. All that matters now is what’s in Samantha’s head.’

‘Which is Jemmie, superimposed over Marion. Sam believes Jemmie is still out there and demanding Sam fulfils her side of the bargain. She’s taken up residence in Sam’s subconscious, she appears in dreams… I think we’re looking at a severe case of bullying from beyond the grave. How did Nigel propose to deal with it?’

‘In the short term,’ Siân said, ‘my guess is he had absolutely no idea.’

‘Now we can talk,’ Bell said. ‘Now I feel safe.’

Just looking at her turned Lol’s stomach cold.

She was sitting up on the wall between two raised battlements. She’d slipped off her shoes, the way she used to do on stage, and she was rubbing her bare heels against the stone through the hem of her long dress.

She’d casually leaned the mandolin case against the wall and then… he couldn’t believe how lightly she’d swung herself up there. Couldn’t believe how anyone who wasn’t a seasoned steeplejack could sit where she was sitting, with her back to that drop.

All she had to do was tip herself gently back – a hundred and thirty-five feet to the street.

Unless some jagged stonework broke her fall and her spine.

‘They let me hold him,’ Bell said, ‘in the hospital. Private hospital – my father paid. I had a room.’

‘The… dead one.’

‘I’d asked for a guitar, to take my mind off what was to come, but I found I couldn’t handle one over my huge pregnant belly, so somebody brought me a mandolin. I couldn’t play it properly, but I could fumble out simple tunes, and when they brought him in I laid him there and played to him: “Wee Willie Winkie”.’

‘When did you know there were going to be two of them?’

He had to keep her talking now.

‘I became aware of a death having taken place inside me.’ Pulling the mandolin case up onto her knees. ‘Turned out that one baby was strangled, I think, by the cord – I didn’t ask too many questions, wasn’t about to become a student of obstetrics. I know they were non-identical, or apparently they might both have died. I didn’t want to see the survivor, he was going to be someone else’s. But this one… he’d died inside me. I’d absorbed his spirit, you see.’

‘Yes.’