Walking with Ghosts (10 page)

He glanced up at the menu board and decided what to order if he ever got to the front of the queue. One chicken and paprika, one giant turkeyburger with trimmings, and an apple pie with cream. Oh, yes, and Marie’s tuna salad in pitta bread without mayo, though God knows how anyone could exist on that for the whole day.

One of the guys behind the counter kept sizing him up. It’s like, you know you’ve seen him before somewhere, but you don’t know where that was. There’s something familiar about him, he could be a relation. But it might be he’s just someone you pass in the street, you’ve never actually been introduced. If it was a woman you’d smile at her, take a chance. But as it’s a guy, sexual orientation unknown, you content yourself with sneaking the odd glance, hoping you’ll remember where you met.

It doesn’t come, though. J.D. was second in the queue now, hoping the little guy wasn’t planning to inject salmonella into his turkey burger.

The woman at the head of the queue finished paying for a shipping order, packed into seven, yes, J.D. counted them twice,
seven
Pancho Villa Sundance thermal carrier bags, collected them together and struggled out of the shop. He looked down at the little guy with the raised eyebrows and said, ‘One chicken and paprika, one giant turkey burger with trimmings, an apple pie with cream, and a tuna salad in pitta bread without mayo.’

The little guy blinked twice.

‘Please?’ J.D. said. Hoping he’d got it right.

‘It’s the beard,’ the little guy said. ‘Without the beard, you’d be J.D. Pears.’ Then he smiled.

‘Wimp?’ J.D. said. And he knew who the guy was. They’d been to school together back in the time of Ted Heath. J.D. looked at Wimp and was swamped by a host of images that had not entered his consciousness for a quarter of a century. Simon and Garfunkel’s ‘Bridge Over Troubled Waters’, men on the moon, Lee Marvin’s ‘Wanderin’ Star’, Decimal day, and Jimi Hendrix.
‘Voodoo Chile,'
he said. ‘Remember that?’

Wimp did an imitation of Hendrix, picking with his teeth at the strings of an imaginary guitar, and the thin man behind J.D. in the queue sighed heavily and shuffled his feet.

‘Yeah,’ said Wimp. ‘And Ned Kelly. Jagger playing dressing-up games.’

‘I knew your face,’ J.D. told him. ‘I was in the queue here, getting closer and closer, saying who is this guy? But I couldn’t put the face in the right place. I’d’ve got home tonight, maybe even in bed just dropping off and I’d’ve remembered it then. Jumping out of bed, man, screaming round the bedroom in me jimjams, “Wimp, hell it was
Wimp
sold me a fucking turkey burger and I didn’t recognize him.” ’

‘Took me about ten seconds,’ said Wimp. ‘I saw you looking through the window, and it was like a face I knew, couldn‘t quite place it, but when you came through the door I‘d already clocked you.

The thin man behind J.D. coughed and looked round at the people behind him for support. ‘Christ,’ he said, glancing upward at a ceiling in the advanced stages of flaking.

‘So, what’re you up to?’ J.D. asked.

Wimp turned round in a complete circle. He held his hands out. ‘Sandwiches,’ he said. ‘Temporarily.’ He looked over J.D.’s shoulder at the queue. ‘Look, I’ll get your order, then I’d like to talk. You got time?’

‘What? Now?’

‘Yeah. Just a few minutes. I’ve got a break coming.’

‘Where?’

‘Outside, there’s a bench over by the green. It won’t take long.’

‘OK,’ J.D. told him.

‘What was it you wanted? Lemon chicken.’

‘One chicken and paprika, one giant turkey burger with trimmings, an apple pie with cream, and a tuna salad in pitta bread without mayo.’

‘You been rehearsing that?’

‘Jesus,’ the thin man said.

J.D. turned round. ‘He’s not coming, man, uses a place round the corner, the service is better.’

He’d taken the first bite out of the turkey burger when Wimp arrived and sat on the bench next to him. ‘I’ve read your books,’ he said. ‘They’re good. Specially
Fungal Fatigue,
that was my favourite.’

You want to talk about my books? Wimp, my ego’s as big as the next man’s. When people want to talk about my books I forgive them everything and join in. Only just now I‘m with somebody else, like a woman, and this is her sandwich in the bag, and she’s waiting for it.’

Wimp put a hand on his shoulder to hold him down. ‘No, it’s something else. Christ, J.D., you’re just the same as you was at school. You haven’t changed a bit. Apart from the beard, you’re exactly the same. Fuckin’ weird.’

J.D. sighed. ‘Can we just get to it?’

‘What I do,’ Wimp explained. ‘I work in the travel business.’

‘A travel agency?’

‘Yeah. I was with the big one for ten years. Last year some of us went to Nepal. Just checking it out. We were thinking of doing some more tours. There’s a lot of money to be made out of that area.’

‘Let me get this straight,’ said J.D. ‘Sandwiches aren’t your main thing?’

‘I told you. Sandwiches is temporary. I got hold of this dope while we were in Nepal. Temple balls. It blew my brains out.’

J.D. laughed.

‘S’not funny, man. The stuff took me apart. It was more like acid, something like that. I don’t do heavy dope, never have. Grass, yes. Even used to grow my own, when we had a conservatory, when I was married. And this stuff, this temple balls stuff was too much. Wasted me. I had a nervous I breakdown.’

‘In Nepal?’

‘No, in York. I was in the hospital, shuffling round a mental ward in carpet slippers and a dressing gown. I thought I’d never get out. I was terrified.’

‘Jesus,’ said J.D. ‘I never heard of dope that could do that.

‘You sure you wasn’t on anything else?’

Wimp shook his head. ‘It’s me, man. I can’t take it, that’s all. The other guys I was with, they smoke it all the time, they bake it in cakes, slip the odd shavings in their mother-in-laws’ coffee. You know, the usual stuff. I wanna get rid of it.’

‘You brought me to this bench to unload dope on me?’

‘That was the first thing I thought, when I saw your face through the shop window. J.D. Pears sent from Jesus to take this fuckin’ dope off my hands. Was I right?’

‘Maybe,’ said J.D. cagily. ‘I’m only a poor writer. What’s deal?’

‘I’m not on the make here, J.D. All I want is what I wanted in the first place, some good old-fashioned,
mild,
dope. A straight exchange.’

‘How much have you got?’

‘A weight.’

‘All right. So if I come up with a weight of something
gentle,
you’ll take it away and give me a weight of Nepalese temple balls that’s guaranteed to blow my mind, and the minds of all my friends, and make me the most popular guy in town?’

Wimp nodded. ‘That’s the deal.’

‘No catch?’

‘No catch, J.D. D’you wanna do it?’

‘Let me think a minute.’

‘Think all you want.’ Wimp was quiet for two seconds. He looked back at the sandwich shop. ‘So, have we got a deal? You gonna go for this dope?’

J.D. pursed his lips and slipped the remains of his turkey burger back into the bag. He gave Wimp his right hand, said, ‘Press the flesh, my man.’

J.D. got back to the place he’d left Marie in a B-registered Montego. And neither of them were there. A Montego is not a small car, and Marie was not a small woman. He scanned the street and the car park where Edward Blake’s Beemer had been. No one was hiding. They’d all skipped.

All right, so he’d been longer than planned, but he was back now, and he’d remembered the tuna salad in pitta bread. ‘Fuck,’ he said to the spot where the car had been, ‘if I d’ve known this was gonna happen I’d’ve put mayonnaise on it.’

*

The Montego, with Marie at the wheel, edged its way along the main street of the village of Osbaldwick. The houses to the left were fronted by a beck, and access to each of them was over a series of individual bridges. She crossed one of the bridges, the Montego passing under a canopy of mature pear trees, before emerging at the gothic arch and weathered door of a stone-built cottage. There was a garage attached housing a cool white Rover. The Montego shuddered to a
wheezing halt as Marie switched off the engine.

As she approached the house the door was opened by a slender vision dressed in a silk purple body with matching jogging pants. A petite, wraith-like face, perfectly made-up, gave her a wide-eyed smile, and said, ‘You must be Marie Dickens. Did you find us OK?’

Marie put on the best face she had, and shook the woman’s tiny hand. How did they do it? These women? Didn’t they eat? Weren’t they haunted day and night by fantasies in chocolate and cream? Or was the pain of denial sweeter than sugar?

‘And you must be Naiomi,’ she said. ‘Naiomi Leaver.’ They were eventually settled in the leaded bay window. Antique Royal Doulton tea service, probably made by the original Sir Henry. One of those tiered cake stands with scones, tiny silver knives and forks, and cherry jam in an earthenware pot. Marie sipped the tea and swore she wouldn’t touch the scones.

‘Did you know India a long time?’ Marie asked.

‘I knew her for ever,’ Naiomi Leaver told her. ‘We were at school in Cheltenham, we learned to ski together in Switzerland. Our families were connected, I don’t know how, some dealings between my father and India’s. You know how these things are? Wheels within wheels.’ She leaned forward and swung the tiered cake stand towards Marie. ‘Do eat these scones, won’t you?’

‘Yeah, thanks.’ Marie took one of them, sliced it in two and reached for the cherry jam. What the fuck.

‘And you kept in touch?’ she said.

‘Very much so,’ Naiomi Leaver confirmed. ‘I saw her the day before she disappeared. We had lunch together, here.’

‘And her husband, Edward? You knew him as well?’

Naiomi smiled. ‘Knew,’ she said. ‘Past tense? I still do know Edward Blake. I’m sure India has gone on to better things.’

‘You don’t approve of him?

‘I don’t like him, if that’s what you mean. I didn’t like the way he treated India. His women.’

‘You knew about that?’

‘Yes,’ said Naiomi. ‘I knew about that. And India knew as well.’

Marie finished off the scone and looked at another one.

‘Please eat them,’ said Naiomi.

Marie took the one from the middle tier; looked a little fatter than the one at the bottom. ‘You said “women” - plural.’

‘Yes. There are currently two. In the past there have been others.’

‘And if India knew about these women, I can take it that their marriage was not particularly happy?’

‘Surprisingly,’ said Naiomi, ‘it wasn’t a particularly unhappy marriage. Edward likes to keep a couple of scrubbers on the go. He gets off on that kind of thing. Lower-class women, young ones, easy to exploit. I suppose they’ll do anything for a fiver or a pack of cigarettes. India would have minded more if he’d had one woman, a love affair.’

‘Are you seriously telling me that India didn’t mind?’

Naiomi smiled. ‘Yes. She didn’t know that Edward paid the rent for their flats. She would have drawn the line at that. She was keen on counting pennies, was India. Always used to quote that thing about counting the pennies and the pounds looking after themselves. Got it from her father. But as long as she thought it was just sex she didn’t mind. Took the pressure off her.’

‘And India,’ said Marie. ‘Did
she
have any extra-marital affairs?’

‘I wondered that during the last few weeks. Before she disappeared. But when I asked her about it, she denied it. I think she’d have told me if she was. We talked about men about sex, about other girlfriends. If something like that had happened, if she’d met someone, she’d have told me.’

‘You’re sure about that?’

Naiomi shook her head. ‘I’m
fairly
sure.’

Marie didn’t remember it happening, but when she looked at the cake stand it was bare. The cherry jam was gone, too the pot which had held it was as if it had been licked clean. She dabbed at the crumbs on her plate.

‘Have you any idea who killed India Blake?’ she asked her hostess.

Naiomi shook her head. ‘I honestly don’t know,’ she said. ‘But I can tell you that India was worried about the amount of insurance Edward took out on her. She said, and this was last year, when he took it out, and she was joking, of course, but she said she thought he might be planning to kill her.’

13

Sam shifts his head and takes your hand. He is kneeling on the floor, in front of your chair by the window. He has left the door open so you can hear Lady Day singing, ‘I’ll Get By As Long As I Have You’. Johnny Hodges’ alto saxophone oozing a warm, refined balm. When the song is finished Sam looks up into your eyes. ‘It isn’t worth worrying about, Dora,’ he says. ‘It’s all in the past.’