Walking with Ghosts

WALKING WITH GHOSTS

Born in Hull in 1942, and educated at the university there, John Baker has worked as a social worker, shipbroker, truck driver and milkman, and most recently in the computer industry. He has twice received a Yorkshire Arts Association Writers’ Bursary. His three previous Sam Turner novels,
Poet in the Gutter, Death Minus Zero
and
King of the Streets
, are available in Vista. John Baker is married with five children and lives in York.

Also by John Baker

POET IN THE GUTTER

DEATH MINUS ZERO

KING OF THE STREETS

WALKING WITH GHOSTS

John Baker

VICTOR GOLLANCZ

LONDON

First published in Great Britain 1999

by Victor Gollancz

An imprint of the Cassell Group

Wellington House, 125 Strand, London WC2R OBB

A Gollancz Paperback Original

Copyright ©John F. Baker 1999

The right of John F. Baker to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 0 575 06643 1

The quotation on page 42 is taken from the poem ‘Daddy’ by Sylvia Plath, first published in
Ariel,
by permission of Faber & Faber Ltd.

Typeset by SetSystems Ltd, Saffron Walden, Essex Printed and bound in Guernsey by The Guernsey Press Co. Ltd, Channel Isles

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

99 5 4 3 2 1

'I've said goodbye to haunted rooms and faces

In the street.'

Bob Dylan

The city and places in this novel owe as much to imagination as to physical reality. The characters and institutions are all fictitious, and any resemblance to real people, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

I would like to thank Anne Baker, Peter Fjågesund and Simon Stevens for their helpful criticism. It is also necessary to say that any offended sensibilities are the responsibility of the writer alone.

This one, like the others, is for Anne.

1

Sam had problems with insurance. You could only insure the things that didn’t matter. Houses and cars, the material trivia of life: things that could be replaced. New for old. You couldn’t insure people. Not really. The insurance companies said you could, but it wasn’t true. When you lost someone you loved they’d make a cash settlement. A bunch of fifties to replace flesh and blood. Courage, spirit, laughter. New fifties, though. Crisp, new ones, to replace an old love.

Jill Sheridan opened the door of her office and came across the reception area towards him. Sam got to his feet and took her hand. She was thirty-seven, lean machine, dressed in a navy Hermes suit, classic cut, with a white silk blouse showing at throat and cuffs.

‘Jill. Looking good, as usual.’

She stood back to frame him from a different angle. ‘You look like shit, Sam. Had a bad night?’

He grinned and shrugged his shoulders. Followed her into her office. The brass plate on the door: JILL SHERIDAN -CLAIMS ASSESSOR. Behind her desk was a picture window that looked out over York. The skyline dominated by the Minster. In the distance the blue smudge of the North Yorkshire Moors.

She stood close to him and they took in the view together.

‘Different to the last place,’ Sam said.

‘Yes. It felt strange at first, but I’m getting used to it. At least it’s not haunted.’

Sam laughed. ‘There must be a ghost in every other building in this town. Romans, Vikings, Normans. They all had their day, and they’ve all left the odd strangler behind.’

‘There’s one in your office, isn’t there?’

He laughed again. ‘Celia and Geordie keep bumping into a shady Victorian lady on the stairs. But I haven’t seen her since I gave up drinking.’

She waved him into a chair and went behind a desk that housed only a telephone/fax/intercom gismo. No pen or pencil, no notepad. Polished wood and the box of technological tricks. ‘Thanks for coming. Can I get you something? Coffee, isn’t it?’

‘Yeah. Unless you’ve gone over to the powdered stuff.’ She punched a key on the intercom. ‘Holly, will you let us have a couple of filter coffees, please? Mr Turner’ll have his black and strong, no sugar.’

‘Your memory’s holding up,’ Sam told her. ‘But how do you work in here? No PC or terminal. What happens if I ring in with info? You can’t even take notes.’

Jill smiled. ‘Always the practical Sam. Whatever happens on the telephone is recorded. Holly intercepts the tapes and does the necessary. If there’s something that needs my action, she prepares it and puts it in front of me.’

Sam shook his head. The year before he married Dora, he’d been keen on Jill, and they’d had a brief affair. He could date the beginning of the end of that affair from the time he’d heard her say that she’d ‘actioned’ something. That, and the fact that his clothes never seemed to suit hers. Wherever they went he’d felt like a poor relation. Nice woman, though. When everything came to an end he’d missed her for days.

‘Why did you call?’ he asked.

‘I’ve got a job for you.’ A hint of a smile passed over her face, as if a secondary thought had come to mind, unrelated to whatever it was she wanted to communicate to Sam. A memory of some kind? ‘It’s rather complicated.’ She hesitated, avoided eye contact for a moment. ‘But I’ve heard you’re having a bad time. If you don’t want to take this one on, I’ll understand.’

‘We need business, Jill. I’m not the only one in the office.’

‘What I’ve heard, Sam, you’re not
in
the office at all.’

He shook his head. ‘Exaggeration. I can’t get in as much
_as
I’d like. But everything’s covered. There’s Geordie and Marie, Celia, all raring to go.’

Jill Sheridan looked over the desk at him. She looked into his eyes, and Sam looked back. ‘I mean at home. How is she, Sam?’

He blinked a couple of times. Sighed. ‘She’s in pain some of the time. Other times she’s calm, coherent. We talk a lot. Talk through the night.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Jill.

‘There’s nothing anyone can do. Sometimes it feels like we’re the only two people in the world. It’s a special time.’ There was a knock on the office door, and Jill’s PA entered with a tray, jug of coffee, cups and saucers. Sam watched her legs and behind as she served the coffee, wondered briefly how many legs and behinds he’d checked out in a long career. And then his thoughts returned to Dora, and he wondered what it would feel like to be a widower all over again.

When Holly left the office, Jill said, ‘I want you to handle this job yourself.’

‘I’ll give it all the time I can. I’m not gonna promise anything, Jill, except you’ll get the same attention you did in the past. This time it might be Geordie who handles it, or Marie. Maybe both of them, instead of me. But at the end of the day you’ll get better service from us than you’ll get from anyone else.’

She smiled. ‘I wouldn’t dream of giving it to anyone else.’

‘So what’ve you got?’

‘Edward Blake.’

‘I thought that was all over. You mean you haven’t paid him yet?’

Jill shook her head. ‘You remember the story?’

Sam showed her the palms of his hands. ‘Only what was in the papers. You’d better fill me in. I never thought I’d be working on it.’

Jill spoke with a clear voice, as if she was making a presentation. ‘Edward Blake is a political lobbyist. He came to prominence in the eighties, and made money under Thatcher and Major. In the spring his wife, India, was kidnapped. But he didn’t go to the police. According to Blake he received a call from the kidnapper, and paid a ransom of twenty-five thousand pounds. But India was not released, and nothing more was heard from the kidnapper.

‘When Blake
did
call in the police, a search was launched, but nothing was found. There was no real evidence to confirm that she’d been kidnapped, apart from Blake’s story, and the police thought she’d run off with a lover. They reasoned that India and her lover had stung Blake for the twenty-five. Anyway, the whole thing died down, the newspapers found another cause to stick on the front page. We had several weeks of minor royals in and out of each other’s playpens. But then, three months later, India Blake’s body was found in a box in a garden allotment shed near the racecourse. She had been left to starve to death. The police took Edward Blake into custody, held him for a time, and seemed fairly convinced that he had been behind it. Especially when they discovered that he’d insured her for two and a half million pounds the previous year.’

‘You still think he did it?’ asked Sam.

Jill shrugged her shoulders. ‘We want you to look into it. Two and a half million pounds is a lot of money. But if you say the man’s kosher we’ll pay out.’

‘The police have written him out of it?’

Jill nodded. ‘He has finished helping them with their inquiries. There was a time when they were convinced he did it. But since the DNA tests they’ve left him alone.’

Sam finished his coffee and looked at the jug. Jill moved it closer to him. ‘She was pregnant, wasn’t she?’ he asked.

‘Yes. Only just. The presumption is that she was raped by the kidnapper. What is certain is that whoever the father was, it wasn’t her husband.’

‘Is that all you’ve got?’ Sam said. ‘Why haven’t you paid the guy?’

Jill shrugged. ‘It smells,’ she said.

‘These things always smell a little,’ Sam said. He sniffed. ‘Yeah, there’s a real whiff, but it’s not like it makes your nose fall off. I bet if it wasn’t two and a half mill you’d have paid him by now.’

‘Oh, sure, Sam. Of course we would. But I’m hoping that if we pay your daily rate for a couple of weeks, we might save ourselves a lot of money.’

She walked to the lift with him. ‘I hope Dora’ll be all right,’ she said.

Sam didn’t say anything.

‘She’s lucky to have someone to take care of her.’

Sam smiled. ‘You don’t need taking care of, Jill.’

‘I know,’ she said. ‘It’s a bitch.’

She touched his arm as he stepped into the lift, dug out the soft smile, the one with the hint of concern in it, and flashed it at him as the doors closed between them.

Sam looked at his reflection in the full-length mirror that made up one side of the lift, and shook his head. Why didn’t they just pay the guy? Jill acted like it would be coming out of her personal bank account instead of corporate funds expressly put aside for the purpose.