Walking with Ghosts

by Baker, John

  WALKING WITH GHOSTS

  Born in Hull in 1942, and educated at the university there, John Baker has worked as a social worker, shipbroker, truck driver and milkman, and most recently in the computer industry. He has twice received a Yorkshire Arts Association Writers’ Bursary. His three previous Sam Turner novels, Poet in the Gutter, Death Minus Zero and King of the Streets, are available in Vista. John Baker is married with five children and lives in York.

  Also by John Baker

  POET IN THE GUTTER

  DEATH MINUS ZERO

  KING OF THE STREETS

  WALKING WITH GHOSTS

  John Baker

  VICTOR GOLLANCZ

  LONDON

  First published in Great Britain 1999

  by Victor Gollancz

  An imprint of the Cassell Group

  Wellington House, 125 Strand, London WC2R OBB

  A Gollancz Paperback Original

  Copyright ©John F. Baker 1999

  The right of John F. Baker to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 0 575 06643 1

  The quotation on page 42 is taken from the poem ‘Daddy’ by Sylvia Plath, first published in Ariel, by permission of Faber & Faber Ltd.

  Typeset by SetSystems Ltd, Saffron Walden, Essex Printed and bound in Guernsey by The Guernsey Press Co. Ltd, Channel Isles

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers.

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  99 5 4 3 2 1

  'I've said goodbye to haunted rooms and faces

  In the street.'

  Bob Dylan

  The city and places in this novel owe as much to imagination as to physical reality. The characters and institutions are all fictitious, and any resemblance to real people, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  I would like to thank Anne Baker, Peter Fjågesund and Simon Stevens for their helpful criticism. It is also necessary to say that any offended sensibilities are the responsibility of the writer alone.

  This one, like the others, is for Anne.

  1

  Sam had problems with insurance. You could only insure the things that didn’t matter. Houses and cars, the material trivia of life: things that could be replaced. New for old. You couldn’t insure people. Not really. The insurance companies said you could, but it wasn’t true. When you lost someone you loved they’d make a cash settlement. A bunch of fifties to replace flesh and blood. Courage, spirit, laughter. New fifties, though. Crisp, new ones, to replace an old love.

  Jill Sheridan opened the door of her office and came across the reception area towards him. Sam got to his feet and took her hand. She was thirty-seven, lean machine, dressed in a navy Hermes suit, classic cut, with a white silk blouse showing at throat and cuffs.

  ‘Jill. Looking good, as usual.’

  She stood back to frame him from a different angle. ‘You look like shit, Sam. Had a bad night?’

  He grinned and shrugged his shoulders. Followed her into her office. The brass plate on the door: JILL SHERIDAN -CLAIMS ASSESSOR. Behind her desk was a picture window that looked out over York. The skyline dominated by the Minster. In the distance the blue smudge of the North Yorkshire Moors.

  She stood close to him and they took in the view together.

  ‘Different to the last place,’ Sam said.

  ‘Yes. It felt strange at first, but I’m getting used to it. At least it’s not haunted.’

  Sam laughed. ‘There must be a ghost in every other building in this town. Romans, Vikings, Normans. They all had their day, and they’ve all left the odd strangler behind.’

  ‘There’s one in your office, isn’t there?’

  He laughed again. ‘Celia and Geordie keep bumping into a shady Victorian lady on the stairs. But I haven’t seen her since I gave up drinking.’

  She waved him into a chair and went behind a desk that housed only a telephone/fax/intercom gismo. No pen or pencil, no notepad. Polished wood and the box of technological tricks. ‘Thanks for coming. Can I get you something? Coffee, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yeah. Unless you’ve gone over to the powdered stuff.’ She punched a key on the intercom. ‘Holly, will you let us have a couple of filter coffees, please? Mr Turner’ll have his black and strong, no sugar.’

  ‘Your memory’s holding up,’ Sam told her. ‘But how do you work in here? No PC or terminal. What happens if I ring in with info? You can’t even take notes.’

  Jill smiled. ‘Always the practical Sam. Whatever happens on the telephone is recorded. Holly intercepts the tapes and does the necessary. If there’s something that needs my action, she prepares it and puts it in front of me.’

  Sam shook his head. The year before he married Dora, he’d been keen on Jill, and they’d had a brief affair. He could date the beginning of the end of that affair from the time he’d heard her say that she’d ‘actioned’ something. That, and the fact that his clothes never seemed to suit hers. Wherever they went he’d felt like a poor relation. Nice woman, though. When everything came to an end he’d missed her for days.

  ‘Why did you call?’ he asked.

  ‘I’ve got a job for you.’ A hint of a smile passed over her face, as if a secondary thought had come to mind, unrelated to whatever it was she wanted to communicate to Sam. A memory of some kind? ‘It’s rather complicated.’ She hesitated, avoided eye contact for a moment. ‘But I’ve heard you’re having a bad time. If you don’t want to take this one on, I’ll understand.’

  ‘We need business, Jill. I’m not the only one in the office.’

  ‘What I’ve heard, Sam, you’re not in the office at all.’

  He shook his head. ‘Exaggeration. I can’t get in as much as I’d like. But everything’s covered. There’s Geordie and Marie, Celia, all raring to go.’

  Jill Sheridan looked over the desk at him. She looked into his eyes, and Sam looked back. ‘I mean at home. How is she, Sam?’

  He blinked a couple of times. Sighed. ‘She’s in pain some of the time. Other times she’s calm, coherent. We talk a lot. Talk through the night.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Jill.

  ‘There’s nothing anyone can do. Sometimes it feels like we’re the only two people in the world. It’s a special time.’ There was a knock on the office door, and Jill’s PA entered with a tray, jug of coffee, cups and saucers. Sam watched her legs and behind as she served the coffee, wondered briefly how many legs and behinds he’d checked out in a long career. And then his thoughts returned to Dora, and he wondered what it would feel like to be a widower all over again.

  When Holly left the office, Jill said, ‘I want you to handle this job yourself.’

  ‘I’ll give it all the time I can. I’m not gonna promise anything, Jill, except you’ll get the same attention you did in the past. This time it might be Geordie who handles it, or Marie. Maybe both of them, instead of me. But at the end of the day you’ll get better service from us than you’ll get from anyone else.’

  She smiled. ‘I wouldn’t dream of giving it to anyone else.’

  ‘So what’ve you got?’

  ‘Edwar
d Blake.’

  ‘I thought that was all over. You mean you haven’t paid him yet?’

  Jill shook her head. ‘You remember the story?’

  Sam showed her the palms of his hands. ‘Only what was in the papers. You’d better fill me in. I never thought I’d be working on it.’

  Jill spoke with a clear voice, as if she was making a presentation. ‘Edward Blake is a political lobbyist. He came to prominence in the eighties, and made money under Thatcher and Major. In the spring his wife, India, was kidnapped. But he didn’t go to the police. According to Blake he received a call from the kidnapper, and paid a ransom of twenty-five thousand pounds. But India was not released, and nothing more was heard from the kidnapper.

  ‘When Blake did call in the police, a search was launched, but nothing was found. There was no real evidence to confirm that she’d been kidnapped, apart from Blake’s story, and the police thought she’d run off with a lover. They reasoned that India and her lover had stung Blake for the twenty-five. Anyway, the whole thing died down, the newspapers found another cause to stick on the front page. We had several weeks of minor royals in and out of each other’s playpens. But then, three months later, India Blake’s body was found in a box in a garden allotment shed near the racecourse. She had been left to starve to death. The police took Edward Blake into custody, held him for a time, and seemed fairly convinced that he had been behind it. Especially when they discovered that he’d insured her for two and a half million pounds the previous year.’

  ‘You still think he did it?’ asked Sam.

  Jill shrugged her shoulders. ‘We want you to look into it. Two and a half million pounds is a lot of money. But if you say the man’s kosher we’ll pay out.’

  ‘The police have written him out of it?’

  Jill nodded. ‘He has finished helping them with their inquiries. There was a time when they were convinced he did it. But since the DNA tests they’ve left him alone.’

  Sam finished his coffee and looked at the jug. Jill moved it closer to him. ‘She was pregnant, wasn’t she?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes. Only just. The presumption is that she was raped by the kidnapper. What is certain is that whoever the father was, it wasn’t her husband.’

  ‘Is that all you’ve got?’ Sam said. ‘Why haven’t you paid the guy?’

  Jill shrugged. ‘It smells,’ she said.

  ‘These things always smell a little,’ Sam said. He sniffed. ‘Yeah, there’s a real whiff, but it’s not like it makes your nose fall off. I bet if it wasn’t two and a half mill you’d have paid him by now.’

  ‘Oh, sure, Sam. Of course we would. But I’m hoping that if we pay your daily rate for a couple of weeks, we might save ourselves a lot of money.’

  She walked to the lift with him. ‘I hope Dora’ll be all right,’ she said.

  Sam didn’t say anything.

  ‘She’s lucky to have someone to take care of her.’

  Sam smiled. ‘You don’t need taking care of, Jill.’

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘It’s a bitch.’

  She touched his arm as he stepped into the lift, dug out the soft smile, the one with the hint of concern in it, and flashed it at him as the doors closed between them.

  Sam looked at his reflection in the full-length mirror that made up one side of the lift, and shook his head. Why didn’t they just pay the guy? Jill acted like it would be coming out of her personal bank account instead of corporate funds expressly put aside for the purpose.

  Still, why should Sam Turner worry? It meant work for the business, paid work. And the thing was about work from Jill, she paid well, and she paid quickly.

  The job would consist of straightforward leg work, interviews with the dead woman’s associates, maybe a little surveillance on Edward Blake. Sam wouldn’t need to get too involved himself, Geordie and Marie could handle it easily enough.

  Two weeks, maybe two and a half. He’d be able to spend more time with Dora.

  It would have been too complicated to go into with Jill Sheridan, but Dora, Sam’s wife, had known the murdered woman. They hadn’t been close, but Dora had been upset when India Blake had disappeared, and shocked when the dead body was discovered. Dora had followed the case closely, sometimes reading extracts from the newspapers to Sam when he got home in the evenings.

  He stopped in at Betty’s for coffee instead of going straight to the office. Sam was still surprised that he was married at all. He’d watched himself getting closer to Dora, talked himself out of it a dozen times, then watched himself making up his mind to go through with it. He and she had recognized the lawlessness in each other. That’s what they called it. Whatever it was, they shared a bond.

  And now she was falling apart.

  He had watched his wife at night rowing out into a fjord. Before the disease took her strength, they had stayed in a wooden cabin near Tromsø, courtesy of a satisfied client. He remembered her strength. The water was slate grey, with a faint touch of blue. There was a line of silhouetted trees on the opposite bank, edged with scarlet, but fading out into pink and blue. No sound. Total silence. She’d pulled away from the shore with strong, rhythmical strokes. Sculling across the glassy surface of the water. She was a silhouette. In the distance an oyster catcher had called out in the wilderness.

  2

  You were a child then. You were a girl in pigtails, thin, your ribs and collar bones sticking out of you like primitive scaffolding. You did not fit. And they told you over and over that you did not fit. And you believed them, because they had all the answers, and even if they had not told you you would still have known that you did not fit, because they all did fit, and you were different. Not fit to... Not fit for...

  What was it all about? That time? Your childhood? You should be able to make sense of it. You feel a deep need to look there for the meaning which has reverberated throughout your life. The meaning, or the lack of meaning.

  You knew he was dying. He had been dying for as long as you could remember. They took you into a curtained room and pushed you towards his bed, and he was your father, your dying father, and he was thinner than you. Badly shaved, prickly and yellow, with hollow jaws, and stinking breath and long gnarled fingers with calloused nails that should have been shorter, and you had to let him hold your hand and go so close that it looked as though you kissed his cheek. Though you never kissed him. Never once; only brushed your lips so close to his face that your heart thumped against your flimsy ribcage. My God, Father, you think now. If you’d known, if it had been possible for you to know then what you know now, then you would have kissed his lips. His dry, flaking lips. And he would not have died so soon, for your lips then were like a knot of juicy grapes, the spittle of the vine. And your lips now are like his were then, and you are kept alive by love.

  You are confused. You are grateful, but you are confused. The world has gone through so many contortions. And it is not because you are so old. It is rather because everyone else is so young. It is because the thing that crouches inside you is so elemental, so mindless, so ageless beyond age, so weighty and cud-chewing, so liable to charge an imaginary rag. You have to keep it at peace. You have to dominate it. You are a matador. You have to pray.

  You have the facility of perfect recall. You are a daughter of the earth. You can remember the details of your mother’s womb, your reluctance to leave its warm-sea-saltiness, your horror at that first tug-of-war. Since then you have become a virtuoso of birth. Now, for as far as your eyes can see, there stretches an infinity of sand.

  Sam’s hand smoothes your brow. His two eyes are twinkling in the darkness above you, slightly out of horizontal, like Aries. It is night and you are coming back. The pains are dulled again. You have come through another tug-of-war. The desert is still there, waiting, but here in the oasis the night is cool.

  ‘There,’ he says. ‘It’s better now.’

  And you feel your head nod assent, and your lips rustle as you try to speak. Sam moves above you and you feel his finge
rs pressing the sponge to your mouth. The cold water is like light, it sends messages of hope to every nerve in your body. You do not tell him when you have had enough, you do not flicker your eyes or alter the tempo of your breath. He takes the sponge away. He knows.

  You can feel Geordie’s dog, Barney, settled at the end of the bed, by your feet. And you wonder about Geordie. Where he is, what he’s doing.

  Your fingers move on the quilt and Sam takes your hand in his own and you hope he can see the smile that is like a song in your blood, and any doubts you might have sink away, down through the mattress, down further through the floor, as his chuckle unfolds itself into the room.

  ‘It’s past, isn’t it?’ he says. ‘You’re feeling better.’

  You move your lips and he gives you the sponge again, and finally you can speak: ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Four o’clock. The night is young.’ He chuckles again. ‘Can you sleep now?’

  ‘Where’s Geordie?’ you ask.

  ‘At home in bed. It’s late.’

  You close your eyes. Yes, you can sleep. You let yourself slip away. Sam is holding your hand. He has a grip of you. It is four o’clock in the morning. You are no longer confused. You are grateful.

  As a part of history, you are connected with events and people of the past. On the day you were born Rudolf Hess invaded Scotland by parachute; clothes rationing was already in force. The previous year the British army was evacuated from Dunkirk, three hundred and thirty-five thousand, four hundred and ninety men huddled on the beach under constant attack; and the following year the siege of Leningrad was lifted. Lady Day had her first taste of hard drugs. You were destined for history.