Walking with Ghosts (9 page)

‘And that’s when you left the company? When he went to the police?’

‘Yes. I couldn’t stay there. I couldn’t stand to be in the same building with him, let alone the same room.’

‘The plot thickens,’ said J.D. when he got into the passenger seat of the Montego and pulled the door closed behind him.

‘Yeah,’ said Geordie. ‘It’s already thicker than we thought it would be when we first unwrapped it.’

‘If this was a novel,’ J.D. told him, ‘Polly Marsh would be about fifteen years younger, and she’d be really hot for the PI. She’d have the evidence to put Edward Blake behind bars, and old mad Eddy, there, would be concocting some foolproof plan to put her in her grave.’

‘You think he did it, then?’

‘He’s the only suspect we’ve got,’ said J.D. ‘And the more I hear about him, the more suspicious he becomes.’

Geordie turned the key in the ignition and the Montego roared into life.

’Jesus,’ said J.D. ‘I never expect it to start. This must be the oldest crate in the universe.’

’Don’t let Sam hear you say that,’ Geordie told him. ‘He’s very fond of it. Put him back nearly three hundred notes.’

11

You miscalculated, Dora. You forgot about the children. Diana and Billy miss Arthur. They don’t like living in this new house with the grimy windows. Diana wants to go back to her old school, and both of them want to play in the avenue with their friends. Billy does not sleep at night. He creeps into your bed and talks about his father. ‘Where’s Daddy? Why doesn’t Daddy come to see us? When are we going home again? Why, Mammy, why?’

Arthur’s ghost hovers over the bed.
Well, Dora. The boy asked a question. Tell him why.

‘Shhhhhhhh.’ You hold Billy tightly, pulling the covers over your head. ‘Hush, Billy. You must try to sleep.’

Arthur had been reading
The Pied Piper of Hamelin
to him before you moved. Billy cries for the lame boy who was left behind when the door in the mountain-side shut fast.

It’s dull in our town since my playmates left!

I can’t forget that I’m bereft...

He is quiet for a while, but never still. He cannot rest. His legs move all the time. You try to hold them down, but he struggles against you. His legs are like snakes in the bed.

‘Billy. Be still.’ You whip back the covers and slap him-You feel his eyes in the darkness, they are pinned to his face with staring pupils. He holds his breath until you think he is dead.

‘Billy.’

Silence.

‘Billy-’

Then he speaks with his father’s voice. ‘I want to go home-’

Diana sits by the window. Her new teacher is not the same as Miss Carson. ‘She’s horrible. She’s older than
you.'

‘Shall we go for a walk?’ You force a note of gaiety into your voice.

Diana grunts by the window. Billy lolls, half on and half off his chair.

‘We could walk by the river. There might be some boats.’

In the distance a longboat’s siren seems to echo your words. The children are paralysed.

Billy slowly brings his eyes in line with yours. He stares you down. He is eight years old and he crushes you with his eyes. You step back, until the wall is behind you, feeling the crumbling plaster with the tips of your fingers.

‘I just thought...’ Your words won’t come any more.

‘I want to see Daddy.’ Billy’s eyes are still gripping you.

‘So do I.’ Diana has turned to you as well.

After a week you capitulate. On the Friday you telephone Arthur at work. He is not there. You are ready for anything. You will prostrate yourself in front of him, let him trample on you.

There will never be a way out after this. This was your final fling, Dora. It cost five years of your life. It smashed your self-image. There is nothing left now. You will have to beg. You will take whatever comes.

Billy climbs over the seats on the top of the bus. Diana sits by the window bouncing up and down in anticipation. The bus shunts from stop to stop, taking you home, back to Arthur. The children are overjoyed, but inside of you doors closing. You look at Diana’s profile, and you think, She’s my daughter, and I’m going to hate her for this.

The children run ahead along the avenue. Then they run back again, complaining that they cannot get into the houSe The door is locked.

‘I’ve got a key,’ you tell them. ‘Don’t worry.’ You stumble over a mound of post. Diana and Billy push you aside running through the house.

‘Daddy. Daddy. Where are you? We’re home.’ They climb the stairs.

You recognize Arthur’s handwriting and pick up the note on the kitchen table. It is like a joke. You read it twice but it does not make sense:
If anyone is interested, I’m in the garden.

You open the back door, Dora, and step outside. The garden is deserted. Arthur is not there. You walk along the path and try the door of the shed, but it is locked.

A sense of relief floods your body. Arthur must be out somewhere. It is better like that, somehow more acceptable that he comes back and finds you returned. You leave the path to collect a few fallen pears, stuffing them into your pockets, ducking under the low boughs of the huge tree. Something catches your shoulder and swings. You raise your hand to your face, expecting a branch to fall, but it is Arthur’s foot which comes towards you. You step back, and again you step back, raising your eyes to take in the full picture. Your hands are in your mouth.

Arthur is hanging by his neck. His clothes are dripping wet. His head is dragged to one side, and he is swinging, ever so gently, swinging backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards.

Involuntarily you take a step towards him, but freeze to the spot as the full horror of it hits you.
If anyone is interested, I’m in the garden.
The words of his note jangle in your head like a mantra.
In the garden. In the garden. If anyone is interested.

You can see the flies around his eyes. The sockets where his eyes used to be. Their quick movement gives animation to his features. They crawl in and out of his nose and run the ridge of his teeth. It is as if he were laughing. Laughing at you, Dora, laughing and swinging, backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards.

He has used the washing line. You recognize it, and glance the posts to confirm it. But your eyes do not wander for long Arthur is a hypnotist. He demands attention.

Even when you feel the movement behind you, you cannot tear your eyes away from him. You stand there transfixed until Billy’s scream sends the birds clapping away over the rooftops. Then you turn and pull him into the house, collecting Diana with her saucer eyes on the way.

‘Is it Daddy?’ she says, as you push her into the kitchen.

12

J.D. went for the sandwiches and Marie stayed behind the wheel of the Montego watching the entrance to Edward Blake’s office. With J.D. out of the car, she snapped into a different mode. Work mode. Surveillance.

In the few days since he’d arrived on her horizon she’d drawn J.D. deep into her life. He hadn’t needed a lot of coaxing, either. He’d been a willing victim. But his presence certainly undermined the job.

Marie wanted to hear all about him, and to tell him about herself. His insights into her and into life in general were off-beat and fascinating. Last night she’d been to see his band in the Bonding Warehouse. Almost unbearably loud country blues and electric feedback. J.D. beating out the rhythms like the march of a chain gang or the chattering howl of a strike in the night. He staggered off the stage at the end of the set and put his arms around her. His face slick with sweat, his eyes hollow with dope. Take me to bed,’ he said. ‘Get me out of here.’

The sex was disappointing. Probably, Marie thought, because their bodies had not yet grown accustomed to each other. The closeness was good, but the act itself seemed somehow mechanical, leaving her with a sense closer to division than to consummation.

This morning Marie had wanted to be on the job by eight, but J.D. couldn’t get out of bed. He wasn’t a morning person. ‘Why such a rush?’ he said. ‘We’re only going to be sitting outside the guy’s office.’

‘This is how we work,’ Marie told him. ‘The early bird gets the worm.’

’Mornings. Christ,’ he muttered. ‘Fucking mornings. The early worm gets eaten alive.’

They’d arrived at eight-thirty, and hadn’t seen Edward . j p took a walk round the car park and found the ’s car, so they assumed he was in the office. And they’d spent the whole morning talking about five card draw.

JD had slowly woken up. ‘What you have to know,’ he said. ‘You have to know the odds. Be able to calculate them. There are over two and a half million possible hands every time you deal the cards.’

‘So you have to be a mathematician?’

‘No. The game’s exciting because, although there’s all those possible hands, you’re only going to end up with one of them. And to win the pot your hand doesn’t have to be the best one. It wins if all the others round the table
think
it’s better than theirs.’

‘So it’s a confidence trick?’

‘Yeah. Everyone in the game is a con-man. You can’t be sure of anything. Nothing is what it appears to be.’

‘Sounds like hell,’ she told him.

But he laughed. ‘No. It’s like life.’

It was good to be with him. Except when she was working. Marie loved the feeling she got from the job, the buzz. Even on a long surveillance it was always there, the anticipation, the expectation of a pay-off. Geordie and Sam complained about surveillance jobs; they couldn’t stand the hanging around, the boredom. But Marie didn’t mind the negatives. She loved every aspect of the job.

Edward Blake came through the front entrance and walked to his Beemer. Pin-striped suit, incongruous looking sky-blue satin tie. He used a remote to deactivate the alarm and open the driver’s door, and he was inside and heading out of the car park within a couple of minutes of his appearance.

Marie looked around, but there was no sign of J.D. Her heart seemed to slip sideways at the thought of leaving him behind, but it didn’t stop her. She moved into first and joined the stream of traffic a couple of vehicles behind Blake’s car. They crawled forward, pedestrians passing them and disappearing into the distance.

She glanced at her watch as they joined the inner ring road, and spoke into her small Sanyo voice-activated system ‘Twelve thirty-eight. Blake left his office ten minutes back and is travelling from Museum Street along St Leonard’s Place. Traffic bloody slow as usual.’ She put the recorder down, then picked it up, and spoke again: ‘Lost J.D. along the way. Which means he’s got twice as many sandwiches as he needs, and I haven’t got any.’

The Beemer indicated left in Gillygate and turned into Portland Street. Marie followed it into the cul-de-sac, reckoning that if she stayed with the traffic in Gillygate she might be in the Montego for several weeks. Not a pleasant prospect. Next time she came this way she’d remember to pack a camp stove and a chemical toilet.

Blake took the only parking space in the street. Marie drove down to the end and watched through her mirror while he found a key and opened the door of a house which appeared to be rented out as flats.

While she was backing out of the cul-de-sac, she saw Blake standing at an upstairs window. He was alone, framed by shabby curtains, and obviously at odds with the environment. He consulted his watch and looked out along the street. Then he had another go at the watch, but must have got the same time again, unless he was counting the seconds.

Marie reversed up to the junction and was attempting an illegal three point turn, when she was stopped in the middle of the road by a girl running in front of her. The girl could not yet have seen her twentieth birthday, she was loaded down with three supermarket carrier bags, and in a hurry-Blond hair with dark roots to match her black eye, a V-necked white woollen sweater, and tight jeans cut off just below the knee. An expanse of gooseflesh calf, then black plastic high-heeled sandals. When she got to the house she looked up and attempted a wave at the window where Blake had consulted his watch. Then she put her bags down on the step, opened the door with a key, collected the bags and stepped inside.

Marie reached for her tape recorder.

JD got to the Pancho Villa Sundance sandwich bar and joined the queue. He was awake now, and less grumpy than been with Marie that morning. It was nothing to do with Marie. He was like that in the morning. That’s how the day started, grumpily, and then as it wore on it got better. By the evening there was not a trace of grump left.

In normal life, where there was no relationship to worry about, he wouldn’t let himself be seen in the morning. He would work. He would stay in his room in front of his computer and write. Two thousand words, minimum, before he’d inflict himself on the world.