Walking with Ghosts (32 page)

Maybe he lost consciousness for a moment, he couldn’t remember, but the next thing he knew was the black-cloaked figure had the rope around his neck, and was dragging him over the cobbled yard. Geordie’s lungs were roaring, his eyes popping. He reached up to the rope with his good hand, but could get no purchase on it as it was already biting into the flesh of his neck. The man in the cloak was not large, but he had tremendous strength, and he was twisting the rope and cutting off Geordie’s life with surprising speed and agility.

Geordie could see the slumped figure of Marie on the far side of the yard. As he watched he saw her move, then his vision began slipping away. What had been the figure of Marie turned into a swirling mist. The sounds made by the wind merged with the rasping sounds coming from his own lungs. There was a continuous wailing now, and Geordie unaccountably thought of storm damage, of insurance claims. Briefly he wondered where Sam was, and what the baby would be called when it was born. He thought his injured arm should hurt more than it did, was glad he’d seen Barney and the duck against the harvest moon, and way off in the distance he heard a wild cat growl.

Marie picked herself up. She hadn’t realized the man in the cloak was there until he’d grabbed her by the arm and spun her into the cobbled yard. He’d been muttering something, a kind of rhythmical chanting,
Che, che, che, che,
on and on like rolling stock. He never varied the volume, his voice harsh, and as he closed in on her his chanting increased in pace, like a death train. The sound was designed to remove all compassion from the man, as if he was consciously squeezing the humanity from himself, and leaving behind a function, an operation, a machine.

He pushed her back against the wall, and it was then that she looked up and saw his face. He was hooded, but within the folds of the hood was the face of a ghoul, red skin, puckered as if burnt, black eyes against a white leprous background. It was a face both savage and dangerous, the face of a serpent about to strike. Marie screamed, then she felt her legs give way, and her skirt rode up her back as she crumpled to the ground.

It wasn’t clear what happened next. She heard Geordie’s voice, though could not make out what he was shouting. Then Geordie was flying over the thing in the cloak. He landed on top of Marie and she heard bones break, quickly, like twigs. The cloaked figure had a rope around Geordie’s neck, and for a moment Geordie appealed to her with his eyes.

Marie got to her feet and rushed across the yard at Geordie and the man or beast who was choking the life out of him. She’d had karate lessons, and was experienced in self-defence, but she forgot everything she’d ever been taught. Instead she turned herself into a wailing banshee. In place of the stiff fingers or the fist, she attacked the cloaked figure with fingernails, claws. She scratched at his face and pulled at his hair. When he put up a hand to defend himself she grabbed it and sank her teeth into it, feeling the flesh crumble and tear, and tasting the fresh salty blood as it ran into her mouth and down her chin. She kicked out at him with both feet, feeling the connection of his shins with the toe of her boot.

She never doubted for a moment that she would vanquish this monster, and in a remarkably short period of time, she realized he had let go of Geordie and was running for the entrance to the yard. She followed for a few metres, determined to stop him, but then realized that Geordie needed her help.

She unwound the twisted rope from his neck. His face was blue, and his head and limbs were limp. Marie said his name, felt for the carotid pulse on his neck. He was breathing and his heart was working, but he was unconscious.

She placed him in the recovery position and ran to the entrance to Stonegate. ‘I need a doctor,’ she yelled. ‘A doctor and an ambulance. And bloody quick!’

She got neither. What she got was four big lads from the Punch Bowl, all smelling of beer, and a Suzuki jeep. The biggest of the lads drove the jeep along Stonegate, and unloaded a plank of wood. Then all four of them loaded Geordie on to the plank, made him comfortable in the back of the jeep, and drove him and Marie to the emergency ward of the district hospital.

When they arrived there he still hadn’t regained consciousness, was looking just like a ghost.

38

The bell rings downstairs and the door opens. You hear Dr Hillerman shout from the foot of the stairs and Diana goes to meet him. He bustles into the room and listens to your heart through his stethoscope. Bushy eyebrows, sprouting every which way. The iron bar has almost gone from your body. You feel light, like one of Mother’s sponge cakes.

‘You’ve had some pain?’ he says.

You look him in the eye and shake your head. He turns to Sam questioningly.

Sam laughs. He can’t believe you’ve looked the doctor in the eye and told a big lie. He turns back to the doctor. ‘It seems better now,’ he says.

The doctor holds your wrist. He is not taking your pulse. He is trying to reassure himself by physical contact. ‘We don’t want to take any chances,’ he says. ‘We’d better have you in the hospital.’

‘No.’

‘Have you a phone?’ This to Sam.

‘She’s all right here, doctor. There’s no need for the hospital.’

The doctor makes a face. ‘Impossible.’

Sam crosses him and stands by the bed, his hand on your arm. ‘She’s all right here,’ he repeats. ‘She doesn’t want to go.’

Silence.

The moment of decision.

‘We can cope,’ Diana tells him.

The doctor dithers on the spot, but he knows he has lost. He turns his face to you. ‘You’re a stubborn woman,’ he says, but the tone of his voice has softened. He closes his bag. ‘I’ll be off,’ he says. ‘Some of my patients need me.’ You listen to his footsteps on the stairs, and the front door closing behind him. You catch Sam’s eye, and return his smile. He strokes the side of your face.

Diana places both hands on the bed and shakes her head. ‘You two,’ she says. ‘You two against the whole bloody world.’

39

William stood back in the shadows of the street and watched Dora’s house. He saw the Daimler arrive and the man get out with the doctor’s bag. A few minutes later he watched the man leave the house, get back into the Daimler and drive away. Every room in the house was lit. The ground-floor rooms were unoccupied. Upstairs, the curtains to Dora’s room were drawn, but figures, silhouettes, could be seen moving behind them.

It would be possible, simple even, to go around the back of the house and gain entry through the kitchen door. Then creep up the stairs, give Dora a big surprise. He had a length of green rope in the pocket of his cloak. A warm knife nestling next to it.

He smiled to himself, then replaced the smile with a furrowed brow. Because things were going wrong now.

His attempt on the woman in Fishergate had gone wrong. Badly wrong. He had planned it exactly like the others, and the others had gone according to plan. The man wasn’t supposed to return when he did. William couldn’t understand that. He had thought about it over the last couple of days, and it still didn’t make sense.

Everything had been going right up to that point. He had stalked the woman. Watched her, he knew how she organized her life. There was a man there, a man who lived with her, but when he went out to his club he stayed out of the house until midnight. Always. As long as William had watched them the man had never returned before midnight. And when he returned he staggered and sometimes sang, as the alcohol boiled inside his brain.

But when William had the rope around the woman’s neck, when her eyes were bulging with disbelief, the man had returned. It was still not ten o’clock. And the man was not staggering or singing, he was quick and alert. He was strong. William only got away because he heard the door to the flat opening. If he hadn’t heard that the man would have trapped him in there.

That had been the first thing that had gone wrong. Not counting India Blake. The India Blake thing had gone wrong, but it had come out all right in the end.

The second thing that had gone wrong was Charles Hopper who was still in the chest in William’s house. William had not wanted to put Charles in the chest in his house. He had not wanted Charles to be involved in any way at all. Charles was work, business. William didn’t want to mix business and pleasure. He wanted to keep them separate, like everyone else did.

And what had made Charles Hopper get involved was the woman detective who was asking questions. William had thought about that as well. And what he had thought was simple. Get rid of the woman detective and everything would stop. Almost. There would still be Charles to deal with, or his body when he died. But that was all. The woman detective was the one who had started things going wrong, so if William dealt with her that would signal the beginning of the end of his troubles.

Only it went wrong again.

He’d trapped the woman detective. Was closing in on her. She already had that look of resignation in her eyes. She was whimpering in the doorway, reconciled to the fact that her life was to be sacrificed when the man in the leather jacket had arrived.

William didn’t like fighting. He especially didn’t like fighting with men. He knew all about it, of course, how to do it. He’d learned all that when he worked as a bouncer. But he didn’t like it. It was true that the man didn’t put up much of a fight. Probably because his arm was broken. And it was also true that William’d won the fight. He’d killed the man, or nearly killed him when the woman detective had begun her attack.

William had had to flee again. What should have happened, he should have been able to frighten the woman detective. He should have killed the man who had come to her rescue, and then killed her. But it all took too long. By the time he’d subdued the man, the woman detective had turned into a fireball. William looked at his right hand. There was a clear outline of her teeth there; you could see where she had sunk them into the flesh. If William hadn’t wrenched himself free at that point she would have bitten part of his hand away. He explored the perimeter of the bite with the fingers of his left hand. It was sore. The blood had begun to clot now, but if he applied a little pressure it would start to flow again.

He should go home and treat it. He had a first-aid kit, with antiseptic ointment, sterile pads and plasters. He could take something for his headache.

He looked up at Dora’s window.

There was a choice to be made here.

Something he had to decide. Only he couldn’t remember what it was.

He had played this part in life. There were no parts like this in the theatre. Not that he’d been offered, anyway. The parts that were on offer in the theatre all required a leading lady. And William didn’t want a leading lady. That’s what had led him to specialize in make-up. All those leading ladies he did not require.

The problem was the words in all the plays, the words where you had to tell the leading lady that you loved her. William had been able to say all the other words convincingly. But those words where you tell the leading lady that you love her had stuck in his throat.

At first he’d told himself he had to conform. That other people managed those words, and that he should be able to manage them as well. He’d tried with Pammy. With Pammy he’d said the words, spilt them out, so they stood there between them. And the words had given rise to a huge silence. The words had been unconvincing. Pammy didn’t believe them at all. And neither did William. The words were empty shells, filled with the sound of the world’s oceans. The silence had risen up and engulfed William and Pammy. And that was the moment when Pammy began to fade, to gradually metamorphose into Dora.

William realized that people didn’t love and hate. There were no passions. He realized that nothing mattered. That it was all play. That there were good actors who survived, and bad actors who fell by the wayside. And he decided that he’d be a good actor.

A good actor was one who played the parts he was best at. William was never going to be a romantic lead. He knew that. He had insight.

He was going to play a loner.

An invisible loner with his own script. He would be a man who lived by night, a man who was unremarkable. Occasionally, from time to time he would audition a leading lady. But only for a very short part. She would not have any lines as such. What you might call a walk-on part.

William held two images in his head. The first was of a howling wind, his cloak whipping around his legs. The second image was of a black Daimler. He promised himself that he wouldn’t move until he’d worked out what connected these two images. He couldn’t remember how long a time had passed since he’d made that promise. It might have been a few minutes, or it might have been several hours.

He knew why he couldn’t work out the connection between the two images. It was because the images were decoys. They had been put there to distract his attention from something else that he should be concentrating on. He didn’t know what the something else was. Once he’d worked out the connection between the wind and the Daimler he’d be free to concentrate on the other.

The light in Dora’s room shone. The silhouettes behind the curtain moved.

The promise that William had made, about not moving. There had been a reason for that, but the reason wasn’t obvious any more. He pushed his left foot forward, and took a step toward the light in Dora’s room.