Walking with Ghosts (7 page)

‘What are you talking about, Dora? Can’t we speak about this later?’

‘No, Arthur. I mean it. I’ve left the house. It’s no good trying to find me. I’ve only taken what’s mine, or what the children will need. Goodbye.’

‘Dora—’

You have taken little. Your small collection of records by Lady Day. ‘Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off’.

‘Dora-’

You put the telephone down. Guilt is tangled with relief and another, wilder, emotion. Irresponsibility? You do not stop to analyse your feelings. You are liberated. Free. You have released yourself. You walk along the narrow, grey streets of your new neighbourhood, Diana and Billy at your side. There is a smell of cement and foam rubber in the air. Diana has something in her eye and wants to go home, but to her proper home, where she lives with Daddy. Billy wants to look at the boats on the river. You take in great gulps of air and sand, and you swallow them down.

8

William wondered if he was going off. A large black bruise had formed itself on his inner right thigh and it was the middle of the night and he was in the street where Dora lived. It was dry but there was the ghost of a storm lingering in the air.

Going off. It was a phrase he’d come across in a magazine called
Harpers & Queen,
which he’d found abandoned in the launderette. An article about serial killers. They killed to a pattern, but all the time there was a psychosis growing inside their minds, and eventually the psychosis took over the pattern and they lost it. They
went off.
Killed randomly, indiscriminately.

William had read the magazine from cover to cover. He’d started with the article about serial killers, then he’d read an article about the best schools for posh people’s children. There were so many articles he couldn’t remember them all. One about Rolex watches, how the cases were made out of a single piece of metal. Another about how at Christmas a bottle of Chanel No. 5 is sold every five seconds. He’d read all the adverts for skin clinics and cosmetic surgery, for introduction agencies and body-management clinics, home gyms and health farms. In this magazine you could find everything you’d never need, from clowns to stretch limousines.

But he’d come back to the article on serial killers and read it again. He’d torn those pages out of the magazine and taken them home with him. The other articles held you for a moment, but this one was compulsive.

Going off.

A strange expression. Not like going off on holiday. Not like that at all.

William only came here in the middle of the night. For the last weeks - was it months? - there had been a light in her room. It was as if she didn’t sleep. As if she sat up all night waiting for someone to release her.

He went around the back of the house and climbed over the wall into the garden. The shed was still there, on his right. The fruit bushes in the centre of the garden, and the climbing rose on the trellis. Up near the house was the pear tree, and William walked underneath it and leaned against its sturdy trunk.

He was shaking, but soon regained control of his body, forced it to become still. His will-power dominated flesh and blood, extinguished emotion. An owl began to hoot but shut down in mid call. William ruled the night. The natural world quivered.

He stood in silence. Thoughts of Dora welled up, the sense of her proximity turned his mind. His head was a cauldron of rage. He fabricated an image in which he waded knee-deep in her blood.

He waited for the ghosts.

9

Dora was awake upstairs and Sam was down in the kitchen making a pot of tea. He wanted to go to an AA meeting.
Now-
But it wasn’t possible. There were no midnight meetings in York. And even if there had been one, he wouldn’t have gone. He couldn’t leave Dora alone.

Still, when the feeling came on it was difficult to shake.

He’d go to the meeting tomorrow. There was nothing to drink in the house. All the pubs were closed. All the supermarkets. Booze was out of the question.

Except he knew maybe a dozen places he could get something to drink right now. A dozen places? At least fifty.

He rang Max, his sponsor. ‘You’re not in bed?’ Sam asked.

‘Yes, I’m in bed. I’ve got the light on, and I’m reading a book about Edward Hopper and watching the midnight movie and talking to an alcoholic on the telephone.’

‘Just so long as you’re not under pressure, Max.’

‘Pressure? Hell, I’m looking for a priest, here.’ He laughed. ‘You want to come over, Sam? Or shall I come over there?’

‘No need. I just wanted to talk to someone who was winning.’

‘That’s me.
And
you. How’s Dora?’

‘She’s great right now. Marie was with her for half an hour tonight. We’re gonna have some tea and a chat.’

‘Make hers how she likes it, but put sugar in yours. And Use a big mug. Tell her I asked about her. Give her my love.’

’Thanks, Max. You’re a lifeline.’

‘Hey, Sam, we sponsor each other, remember. How many times do I ring you?’

‘Plenty, I guess. You can go to sleep now. I’m not gonna drink tonight. One drink’ll be too much, and a hundred won’t be enough.’

He heard Max laughing as he put the phone down.

Sam made the tea like Max said, and took it upstairs to Dora. Tea with sugar was something he’d never get used to. But it was medicine. Something you had to take to remind yourself not to drink Scotch.

Barney got to his feet when Sam entered the room.

Dora was propped up with pillows. Her eyes were shining with anticipation. No pain for the time being, just Dora feeling good and looking forward to spending time with Sam. She stretched out a hand to him as he sat by the bed, and he took it in his. The thinnest hand in the known universe.

‘Tell me about the day,’ she said. ‘About the world and what’s happening.’

‘We’ve got a guy working with us, a writer. J.D. Pears. Everyone calls him J.D.’

‘Everyone except Marie,’ Dora said, laughing. ‘She calls him Mister Right Now.’

‘Yeah, she’s taken with him. The temperature goes up every time they look at each other.’

‘That’s nice for her. She’s usually so down on men. Expects more of them than they can give.’

‘Yeah, but that’s healthy,’ said Sam. ‘Keeps her out of trouble. J.D., on the other hand, appears kind of green. Like he’s got no idea what a woman in love will do.’

‘Well, he’s going to find out. She’s itching to get her hands on him.’

‘Christ,’ said Sam, shaking his head. ‘I promised Jill Sheridan she’d get a thorough investigation into Edward Blake. I hope Marie’s gonna concentrate on it.’

Dora stroked the back of his hand. ‘She will, Sam. She might be counting the hours until knocking-off time, but she won’t shirk the job. You know that.’

’Yeah, I know. And I’m glad for Marie. She’s had a tough since Gus was killed. And J.D. seems to like her all right. But he’s a gambler.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘Means what it says. The guy’s a gambler.’

‘Horses?’

Sam shook his head. ‘Five card draw. Plays in some heavy games around town. Including one patronized by Edward Blake.’

‘How do you know all this, Sam?’

‘It came out in our talk. I had to tell him about Blake, because he’s gonna be with Marie and Geordie, inquiring about the guy. And he said he knew him. Then he had to tell me where he knew him from. The two of them play in a Tuesday game in Patrick Pool.’

‘Isn’t there some conflict of interest there?’

‘I wondered about that,’ said Sam. ‘But J.D.’s not particularly friendly with Blake. And, anyway, he’s only tagging along as an observer.’

‘He’ll be OK, Sam. Marie’s not looking for a husband, you know. She’s just found someone irresistible.’

‘And he plays in a band. Drums. Band called Fried and the Behaviourists.’

‘Freud, surely?’

‘No, that’s what I said. Freud and the Behaviourists. But it isn’t, it’s
fried.'

‘As in egg?’

Sam nodded. ‘He’s a real character. Talks like someone who’s just walked out of an American crime novel, sometimes like a man in a western.’

Dora squeezed his hand and closed her eyes. She smiled, and Sam knew she would be asleep in a moment. ‘J.D.?’ she Said, opening her eyes. ‘Is
he
fried?’

Sam left a long gap there, so she’d have to go back, look at that last sentence all over again. He said, ‘Can I get back to you on that one?’

She closed her eyes and Sam watched her. She shoo^ gently with laughter; she was radiant like an overblown plant at the end of a glorious summer. A rose with heavy lush petals, in those final hours before they begin to fall. ’ When her breathing eased into a regular pattern, he let g0 of her hand and left the room.

J.D. was probably OK, but you could never take coincidences for granted. If J.D. owed Edward Blake money, and if Blake wanted to know how the investigation was proceeding this would be an easy way of finding out. Sam didn’t think that was what was happening, but he couldn’t discount it either. Not at this stage of the game. J.D. Pears would have to be watched, and by a more critical eye than Marie’s.

He slipped
Bringing It All Back Home
into the CD player and selected track eleven. Didn’t know why, but he listened to the words until the beginning of the second verse. Then he smiled. He’d tell Marie tomorrow, or the next day. Maybe the day after that. Whenever there was an opening so it didn’t sound like he was preaching. The highway is for gamblers.

Marie thought things through, anyway. She didn’t need Sam to tell her to use her sense. And if passion had the upper hand at the moment, she wouldn’t appreciate Sam getting in her face. He knew better than to do that. Catch Sam Turner standing in the way of a tenacious hormone? No way, he’d heard the music himself from time to time; it’d be easier to stop a bull.

Something else he’d learned from J.D.: Blake was on the Millennium Committee. The guy moved in exalted circles. He was perfect for the villain of the piece. As a lobbyist he paid MPs to put pressure on ministers, so that his big-money clients could screw the electorate. He was a moral scumbag-But would someone like him go the extra yard and kill his wife?

Sam shook his head. He didn’t know the answer. But he know that you can’t rule anyone out. And when some-was killed with violence, statistically the perpetrator was the person they were married to.

Sam took the CD out of the player and put it back in its case. He went quietly up the stairs and stood by Dora’s bed. Her eyes flickered for a moment, then opened. She said: ‘Sam, I’d like to see Billy again.’

Her son, Billy. She hadn’t seen him or heard from him for years. Sam had never met him. ‘I’ll try,’ he said. ‘Maybe Diana’ll have an address? But if he doesn’t want to be found, I won’t be able to do much about it.’

Dora had gone back to sleep. Maybe she hadn’t been awake. She knew too much to argue.

An hour later Sam was sitting in a chair downstairs, the television with the sound switched down to drooling level, wondering if he should go to bed. He pressed the buttons on the telephone without lifting the receiver. Practising.

10

She was white, looking thinner than normal, especially her face, her eyes wide and dark. ‘I feel sick,’ Janet said. Geordie panicked momentarily, a quick flutter at his breast, a tightening around his hairline. Then he breathed again. Something she’d eaten, or too much work.

‘Why don’t you go back to bed?’ he asked. ‘I’ll give Marie and J.D. a bell. They can manage without me for a day.’

‘No.’ Janet shook her head. ‘I’m going to work. We’re expecting deliveries. It’ll be chaos if I’m not there.’

‘But if you’re being sick—’

‘I’m not being sick, Geordie. I feel queasy. It’ll pass.’ Geordie was standing in the doorway to the bathroom, Janet with her back to the wash basin. She went over to him and touched his face, and he leaned forward to kiss her forehead.

‘You sure?’ he said.

‘Yeah. I’ll be all right.’

‘I should go in, as well. I said J.D. could come with me today. I’m gonna see the woman who used to be Edward Blake’s secretary.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Time to go.’

‘I’m ready,’ Janet said. She followed him outside, grabbing a coat from a hook and putting it on while she waited for Geordie to lock the door. Barney looked up at her, his head cocked to one side. Banks of dark cloud had stacked themselves up over the playing field — shadowy, heavy. But to the south the clouds were grey, blue, fluffy. Over the ditch at the bottom of the garden there was a huge tree. Geordie didn’t know what kind of tree it was. He made another mental note to look it up in a book.

When Geordie looked back a couple of years, to the time Sam had picked him out of the gutter, he sometimes thought it was a dream. But it wasn’t. He had been a homeless down-and-out, and for some reason Sam Turner had pulled him out of it. Geordie would never understand why. And he’d never stop being grateful.