Walking with Ghosts (29 page)

*

A quick celebratory coffee and back to work. When she had spoken on the telephone with Charles Hopper, secretary of the Fulford Players, he had sounded as though he might be helpful. Marie had expected him to get back to her, but there had been no word from him. She decided to visit his house rather than telephone again. You got more information from a man if you could establish eye contact.

He lived in a three-storey Georgian town house off the Fulford Road. The place was well maintained, the mortar sharply pointed, the windows cleaned, and the three steps up to the front door had been recently scrubbed. The weather was electric. When Marie had started out the sky in the east had been black; now it was clear over there, but the air was heavy with pressure. There were sudden gusts of wind, shaking the trees and sending people running for their hats, then just as quickly the wind would die away and leave behind it an apparent calm.

The bell jingled merrily inside the house, but no one came to answer the door. Marie rang again and waited long enough for a man to get out of bed, find a dressing-gown and descend from the top floor. But there was no sound from inside the house.

She walked around the side, to the back of the building. Startled herself momentarily when she saw her own reflection in the glass of a conservatory. She wasn’t totally put at ease, either, when she realized that it was her own reflection. Her practised eye detected that she was packing several pounds more than she had at her last visit to the bathroom scales.

She peered through the windows. The place was dust free. There was an easy chair in front of a television, a small table to the right of the chair. One wall was covered with books. And nothing was out of place. The surface of the table was uncluttered, polished. There was a framed photograph of a man, presumably Hopper himself. The floor of maple panels was naked apart from a rug. Charles Hopper was an unusual and fastidious man. Either that or he had a housekeeper.

Oh, hell, though, putting on weight. As soon as you take your eyes off it, it starts to creep back. Soon as you relax. She’d been so involved with J.D., so intrigued by him, she hadn’t noticed the fat making its comeback. Now it had several days’ advantage, which meant she’d have to suffer for twice as many
weeks
to get back to normal. She’d read an article by a Christian saying you could pray yourself slim, that Jesus would dissolve all the fat and leave you trim and ready to fight the devil. You just had to believe.

Marie didn’t.

And it also confirmed something she had known all of her life. Jesus had no weight problems whatsoever. If he had been a fatty he’d never have got Christianity started. Or if he’d been a fatty and somehow managed to get Christianity started, we’d have heard about it big time. Like Robbie Coltrane, say. It would have been a feature.

But then the whole script would have been different. If he’d been fat they might not have crucified him, they’d have found some other way of getting rid of him, maybe drowned him in a barrel instead. Because you can’t have a fat man on a cross, it would make the whole thing top heavy, end up toppling over. You just couldn’t found a religion on a scenario like that. But if they’d drowned him in a barrel the iconography, everything, would have been different. Instead of wearing crosses round their necks, people would have barrels.

People with stigmata would never have been heard of. Never have been thought of. Hysterics the world over would not bleed from their hands or their sides. Instead you’d get occasional cases of
bloated
fanatics, their lungs filling up with fluid.

And the last supper would’ve been a fat man’s supper. The last
banquet,
at which bread and wine would simply have been incidentals among a gluttony of nourishment; hors d’oeuvre, cheeses, meats, succulent steak, beef, mutton pork, veal, lamb, roast and boiled potatoes. They would have had stew, mince, broth and soup, a variety of suet puddings. And all the disciples would have been fat as well In fact Christianity would have been a fat person’s religion A society of bellies and fleshspots getting together to race through the fish course and the entree so they could bite, champ, munch, crunch, chew, sip, suck, and swill their way through a mountain of pastry, sweets, doughnuts, pancakes, mince pies, blancmange, and ice cream. While on the side would be chocolate, liquor and liqueurs, claret and coffee to ensure that everything was well washed down.

Holy Communion as we now know it wouldn’t exist. It would have taken on a totally different face. When the priest asked the congregation to come forward to taste the body and blood of Christ, a vast catering conglomerate would go into action to feast the faithful.

Marie smiled. Religion would really mean something then.

‘You looking for somebody?’ The woman’s voice dragged Marie back from her reverie. She turned to face a stout woman in a turban which was designed to hide a mixture of pink and white plastic hair-curlers. She was standing at a wooden gate which connected her garden to the garden of Hopper’s house. The woman’s face had been scrubbed with the same relish and zest as the front steps of the house, and, Marie concluded, with the same hands.

‘Yes. I’m looking for Charles Hopper. Do you know if he’s at home?’

The woman’s top lip curled slightly. ‘If he was at home he’d have answered the door. Who’s looking for him?’

‘My name’s Marie Dickens.’ She stepped forward and offered the woman her card. ‘And you are?’

‘Dawson’s the name. Clara Dawson.’

‘I spoke to Mr Hopper on the telephone a couple of days ago,’ Marie said. ‘He was helping us with an investigation. Do you know when he’ll be in?’

The woman studied the card, narrowing her eyes to read the small print of the address and telephone number. ‘You’d better come in for a minute,’ she said. ‘I’m at the end of my tether.’

She opened the gate and Marie followed her into a small cottage that was attached to Hopper’s house. Clara Dawson’s legs were criss-crossed with varicose veins.

The door led directly into a Formica kitchen. The surfaces were all clean, and a whistling kettle gleamed its aluminium sheen from the top of a gas hob. A solid pine table took up the centre of the room, and the floor was covered with earth-coloured tiles. On the door of the fridge was a photograph of the woman, taken perhaps twenty years earlier. In the photograph she was surrounded by five small children, each of them with a striking resemblance to her, and she peered out at the camera with a permanent expression of amazement.

She noticed Marie looking at the photograph. ‘They’ve all gone now,’ she said. ‘When they’re that age you think they’ll never leave, then you wake up one morning and they’ve all flown.’ Marie couldn’t tell from Mrs Dawson’s expression or tone if she was happy or sad at the loss of her brood. ‘You got any, yourself?’ the woman asked.

Marie shook her head. ‘Don’t suppose I shall have now. Left it all too late.’

They lapsed into silence.

‘You said you were at the end of your tether, Mrs Dawson. What do you mean?’

‘It’s Mr Charles. Sorry, Mr Hopper. He’s not been home for a couple of days. It’s not like him to go missing. He always says, even if he’s just nipping out for an hour.’

‘When did you last see him?’

‘Friday. I look after the house for him. He was reading the newspapers when I went out to do some shopping. When I came back he’d gone, and I haven’t heard from him since.’

‘Friday,’ said Marie. ‘And it’s Sunday now. Have you informed the police?’

‘No.’ Mrs Dawson shook her head. ‘I didn’t know what to do.’

‘I think you should tell the police,’ Marie told her. ‘They’ll check the hospitals, at least. If he’s had an accident, something like that...’

Mrs Dawson began shaking, and Marie led her to a chair. ‘You’re sure he didn’t mention anything? Where he might have gone? If he had any phone calls or visitors?’

Clara Dawson put both hands flat down on the surface of the table. She shook her head from side to side. She wasn’t listening any more. Now that she’d finally voiced her fears they came to the surface, hollowed out her eyes, and hung like gargoyles in the ploughed furrows of her lumpy face.

William followed her. He watched Charles Hopper’s house, and he saw the woman arrive. It was as easy as that. He was wearing his lucky socks. Charles had said she was a private detective, but he hadn’t seen her, only spoken to her on the telephone, so he couldn’t describe her. William thought she looked like a journalist, but journalists and private detectives looked alike. They were snoopers. This one was thirty-five years old, something like that. A bit of a fatty. She wouldn’t be easy to overcome, except she’d be surprised. Usually they didn’t fight, anyway, they went to pieces, gave up almost immediately. Started begging.

He tried to think of her sexually. Imagined that he found her attractive. But he couldn’t do it. William had never found women attractive. He’d told himself that Pammy was attractive, all those years ago. He’d told himself that he wanted to have sex with Pammy. But he hadn’t wanted to. Not really. And for a while there, when he was in London he’d thought that he might be gay. He’d tried looking at men, then, and young boys. But it was the same as looking at women. They disgusted him.

They were weak. They let life and events overwhelm them. Humanity was like insects. William called them
The hordes.
He watched them every day. He had studied them for years. They queued up outside shops before they opened, and at the doors to theatres and cinemas. They formed orderly lines and they waited. They sat in stationary cars, and on buses. They sat there and they waited. They lived in their houses, little boxes, side by side, stretching like ribbons along drab or twee roads. Even their clothes were the same, their crimplenes and their nylons and mixed fibres. How could you pick one of them out and say you found him or her attractive?

They weren’t attractive. Not at all. They were ugly.

Ugly and pointless.

Getting born, eating, fucking, and dying.

Physical actions taking place in a vacuum, an impenetrable silence.

She rang the doorbell a couple of times, then she stood back and looked up at the house. After a few minutes she went around the back. William’s first thought was to follow her. He could stride over the road and down by the side of the house. Charles Hopper wasn’t at home, he knew that, because Charles Hopper was in a chest back at William’s house. So the woman, the private detective, would be alone now around the back of Charles’ house. No one at home. The house deserted, quiet. He could come up behind her, take her by the throat, shake the life out of her. Punish her.

But for what?

William didn’t move. Why should he punish this woman? She wasn’t Dora. She was no one. Nothing.

And yet, there was a reason. Otherwise William would not have followed her. Now it was like being in a dream. The day had set itself up around him, it had placed him at the centre of the scene, painted in Charles Hopper’s house provided the private detective. Somehow the opportunity had arisen to get rid of this woman detective, and deep within William there was a voice nudging him towards the conflict.
Take her. Take the woman. Do it.

And he would do it, too. If he could remember why.

If she was Dora he wouldn’t hesitate. But something was wrong. Dora was a mother, and this woman wasn’t. Even that wasn’t clear in William’s mind. He didn’t know if this woman was a mother or not. And it was important to know that. If she wasn’t a mother there would be no point in taking out her eyes.

The woman called Marie Dickens left Charles Hopper’s house. Suddenly she was back on the street and walking towards the town. William followed.

He followed her home. He watched her take a key from her pocket and put it into the lock of the door of her house by the river. He sat on the grass verge about eighty metres away and waited, watching her house. After an hour a man arrived. A man with a raggedy beard. The man tried the door, but it was locked. The man knocked on the door lightly, twice, and Marie Dickens opened the door and let the man with the beard in.

The wind came back again. Gusting along the river and the bank so that birds wheeled in huge arcs to maintain their positions. For a few moments William thought it was out of control, a tempest, a hurricane, he narrowed his eyes and grabbed hold of the sods of grass. But it blew itself out as quickly as it had arrived. There was a puff and a sniffle and a catching of the breath and the earth returned to its previous calm.

William went home to his house in St Mary’s. While he’d been sitting on the grass verge by the river he’d managed to clear his head. Now he was tired, weary, and felt that if he got on to his bed he’d fall asleep. But he didn’t want to do that. He wanted to sort out what had happened to him this morning.

There were two things he had to do. The first thing was to kill Dora. William smiled. Not literally, of course. If he killed his mother he would be arrested by the police and locked away. Everyone would know, the whole world would know that he had done it, and if there was a court case they would all know
why
he had done it. For his father. Revenge for his father. But then they would all forget. Within weeks, days even, the world would forget. William would be locked away, Dora and his father would be dead, and there would be no one to remember. The newspapers, the television, all the reporters would find another story. Reality would be swamped by illusion.