Ghost

by Charmaine Ross

  Thoughtful and chivalrous. I couldn’t help but like him. It helped me forget about the aching hole inside me since Elliot had disappeared.

  “Tell me how I can help you.”

  “We need to help a—friend of ours who’s having trouble with his will. There’s a couple of people I’d like to check out. Can you call up some information on a Paul and Lucy Richards?” Laura rattled off the address.

  Thadius made a few quick keystrokes and a screen of information instantly appeared, “Okay, here they are. Lucy Richards. Seventy years old. Live alone with her son, Paul Richards, forty-eight years old.”

  “Her son! Paul is Lucy’s son! I thought he was her husband.” I gasped. That was the second name link.

  “Interesting that they’re both put down on Henry’s will,” Laura said.

  “Lucy did a brief stint of work as a cleaner before retiring on benefits twenty years ago. Since she reached retirement age, she’s been on the old age pension. She’s lived in the same house for forty years and has several outstanding bills.”

  “She owns the house?”

  Thadius shook his head, “Housing commission residency. Seems Paul had a little more work sense than his mother and works as an administrator at a place called Dandenong Telecommunications.”

  “Why would their names come up on Henry’s will? What’s the connection between them and Henry?” I spoke more to myself trying to work some logic in.

  ‘At first glance, they seem harmless enough, but in my experience, the way things look usually isn’t the reality. I’ll see what else I can dig up about them, but that might take some time,’ Thadius said.

  Now that we’d drawn a dead end, I wondered if Thadius could help with Elliot. My heart beat a little faster, knowing I might learn something new about Elliot. ‘Can you help me find some information about a man? A detective,’ I said.

  ‘No problem. I’ll log into the Victorian Police server.’

  My mouth nearly hit the floor, “You can log into the Police Server?”

  Thadius treated me to a brow waggle. “It’s a piece of cake. They really should make it a lot harder. You know the damage an immoral hacker can do?”

  “Is there such a thing as an immoral hacker?” I shook a mental head. I had to wonder what mischief he’d already caused but I didn’t want to press my luck. “Anyway, the person I’m interested in died in nineteen thirty-eight. Do you think you can trace that far back?”

  “Let’s see.” Thadius swivelled to the nearest keyboard. The screen above him flickered into life and in less than thirty seconds the Victoria Police logo blinked at me.

  “Right. Full name,” Thadius said.

  “Elliot Stone. Detective. South Fitzroy Precinct. H0334.”

  Thadius’ fingers flew over the keyboard and to my amazement data filled the screen. “You’ve found something!” I exclaimed.

  “Seventy years is a long time ago. This isn’t information you can just Google on your home computer, so it’s no wonder you didn’t find anything about him if you went down that route, which you probably did because you’re here. Take a look at this.”

  Thadius pressed the enter key and there Elliot was, standing in a black and white group photo of nameless men. My eyes went straight to his face. I pointed, grasping Laura’s shoulder, “That’s him!” Somehow seeing him in that photo made him more real. Alive. He’d actually been here on earth. Had been a walking, talking man who had lived and worked and lived. He wasn’t a figment of my imagination, or a wayward ghost pretending he was someone he was not. This was Elliot Stone. The man.

  “You didn’t say he was good looking,” Laura said.

  “I didn’t tell you what he looked like at all.”

  Laura wiggled her brows, “Keeping him to yourself.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. He’s a ghost.” I gasped, although that didn’t stop me from wishing he was alive and real and that I could touch him and…I clamped down those thoughts. They were only going to get me more depressed.

  Thadius magnified a badge on Elliot’s jacket, “Do you know what this is?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “That’s the badge for the Commonwealth Police.” Thadius’ eyes were sparkling with excitement. At my obvious blank look he continued, “It’s the Investigation Branch Detectives Medallion. This was only given to the Elite. Your Elliot Stone wasn’t just an every-day detective, he would have been into some pretty intense stuff to earn one of those.”

  I nodded. Given the strength that rolled from Elliot, I could well imagine he would have been that type of cop.

  Thadius clicked a link, then whistled low, “He went after Freddy the Frog.”

  “Is that serious?” My ignorance showed.

  “Serious as it can get. He was a major underworld figure in Melbourne. Around about your detective’s time he would have been up and coming, but still, he would have been the type of guy the police would have noticed. Slippery as slime. Nothing held him in court. Might pay to know he was eventually gunned down by on Melbourne’s South Warf in nineteen fifty-eight by someone he’d wronged. No-one saw anything, knew anything, did anything even though it happened in broad daylight on a packed work area.”

  I thought of South Warf. Now it was a freshly built palace of direct factory outlets upmarket and polished. A far cry from the tide of humanity that once walked the land decades ago. “How do you know about all this?” I asked.

  “Are you kidding! I love this history. Can’t get enough of it.”

  “Underbelly,” I nodded. “I was hooked, too.” The recent spate of television programs about Melbourne’s criminals, recent and historical, had spun the imagination of thousands.

  Thadius flicked his hand, “Way before then. They glamorized it. Believe me, criminals don’t look as dazzling as those actors do. I read about all this stuff when I first hacked into their system. I love this crime period. Pre-technology. It would have been a different world back then.”

  He swivelled to face us. “Back in the thirties in Melbourne it was rough. Real rough. Especially Fitzroy. It was the centre of a massive illegal gambling industry. So many criminals took advantage of it. It would have been like putting spot-fires out all over. Police corruption was rife. Half the time the criminals earned more money than the police. I guess getting paid to tum a blind eye fed your family.”

  “Tough decision.” If I had kids, I knew I’d do anything for them, morality be damned. I didn’t know about the desperation of being a parent, but I knew times were tough back then. No-one knew about the term ‘disposable income’. There was nothing left over for savings or any sort of luxury.

  “There were illegal bookmakers in hotels. Illegal liquor sales were rife. And generally, people accepted these activities. But when they did, it enticed more corruption. It was a vicious circle. That’s when the hard-arses started popping up. Standover men were hired who went and collected debts. Usually from innocent people, but occasionally from the bookies themselves. That’s when violence came onto the streets and innocent people were hurt and worse.”

  The streets of Melbourne nowadays were extremely safe. Something I was immensely glad for. People like Elliot did a lot to clean them up for my generation. “I can’t imagine Melbourne being like that.”

  “Regular ‘Capone’ times. Quite lawless. Fitzroy took the brunt. Gertrude Street in particular. In fact, that’s Elliot’s precinct.”

  “He had to be working against all that,” I exclaimed. “Right in the middle of it.”

  “But they didn’t give medallions out to normal cops going after people like that. There had to be another reason, a bigger reason as to why he was placed there.”

  I chewed my lip. “He said he knew people on the flight that crashed in the Dandenong Mountains just before he died. He was going to meet one of them. Leonard Abrahams. He must have been important to Elliot. There has to be something about that crash that triggered his memory.” I gave Thadius a quick run-down of the doomed flight.

&n
bsp; Thadius tried some more links. I watched him flick through files of notes and text so quickly I had only begun to read the link before he’d discarded it. “There’s nothing else here.”

  It seemed he’d been a ghost in life too. “There has to be more.” I heard the desperation in my voice. “If Elliot’s work was so important, there’d have to be a paper trail somewhere.”

  “I’ll see what I can dig up, but it’s going to take some time,” Thadius said. “But I have his details.”

  I frowned, “Details?”

  Laura squeezed my hand “Cassie—his dates. You know, when he was born and when he...”

  Died. The excited rush of adrenaline drained from me. I gripped the handles of the chair and nodded, feeling dread seep into my bones. I don’t know quite why I felt like this. I knew he had died, but now it was more personal. I knew the man. Hearing about his death didn’t correlate with the man who was so much alive. It vaguely occurred to me that Thadius wasn’t concerned we were asking about someone who was dead. “Tell me.”

  Laura looked up at the screen. “Born 1902 in Melbourne from mother Elma and father Alexander, both English immigrants. Eldest of five siblings.”

  “He had brothers and sisters?”

  “Two died at birth. He was survived by two brothers. Both died in the seventies. Seemed as though they were quite well to do when he was a kid. He went to Melbourne Grammar school, graduating in economics and law. Quite the intelligent young man. Started his working life as a lawyer.”

  I tried to imagine him as a lawyer, but it was far too sanitary. There was a harder edge to him that had nothing to do with the inside of a courtroom.

  Laura kept reading. “He then found his way into criminal law and became a QC in the thirties.”

  “That doesn’t explain the badge,” I said

  “No,” Laura said slowly, “There’s only a little bit more.”

  “Go on.”

  “He died November second. In nineteen thirty-eight.”

  I did a quick mental calculation, “He was only thirty-five.” So young. So talented. “So much to live for,” I whispered.

  “There are two more things.” Laura sounded hesitant.

  I frowned, “What could be worse than dying at thirty-five?”

  “He had a wife. She died on the same day.” My heart stumbled. Not only had he been married, but his wife had died on the same day. With him? Under what hideous circumstances would that have happened? Just what had he been involved with? “No wonder he doesn’t remember anything about his life. Psychological trauma. He’s blocked it all out. Everything.”

  “They were survived by one son. He was only two years old when they passed. The son was brought up by Elliot’s brother and wife upon their deaths.”

  The breath stuck mid-way in my throat. I tried to choke out a comment, but it didn’t reach my lips. All I could do was fling it around the turmoil of my mind. He had a wife. And a son. I did the quick mental math. A son that may very well still be living today.

  Was that why Elliot was here? Not for me at all, but for the son he and his wife had no choice but to abandon in death?

  The implications banged and crashed into my mind. I’d thought he was here for me, to help me with this gift—this curse—but now knowing this, he might be here for his son. His legacy. It was a physical connection to his life and I had nothing to do with why he was actually here. Now because of his amnesia, because of me, he was being side-tracked into doing something he shouldn’t even be a part of. He might only be here to finish the business of his son, seeing that he was kept safe because of his death and then when he knew his son had thrived in life, it would allow him to move on in peace and I would be left here to cope. On my own. Without Elliot.

  The thought left me cold, the unanswered question like a heat-seeking missile to my heart, destroying the fabric of the unusual connection that was so tangible between us.

  What would happen to me?

  Chapter Seven

  I called for Elliot in my mind, but nothing came back to me but the cold, dark night. As we sat in the car, I turned to face Laura and shook my head. She reached out and squeezed my hand as she drove, “He’ll come back,” she whispered.

  I nodded and clenched my teeth, keeping my emotions tucked in tight control. I could only wait and hope and wonder if the more time he spent in that unholy grey mist, the more he wouldn’t be able to find his way back out again.

  “You’re worried about Elliot.” It was a statement. Not a question. Although Laura didn’t have the gift of seeing spirits, she wasn’t blind.

  I nodded, “Yeah, I’m worried.”

  “Just—how—worried are you?” She gave me a sideways glance. She wore one of those I-know-more-than-you-think-I-know-looks. One thing about Laura, I couldn’t pull one on her. She knew about every crush I had, even when I was ten and I was in love with a boy I’d met through School of the Air. If nothing else, my sister was intuitive and she knew I felt more than what I should logically be feeling. But still, there was a part of me that held it all back, because if I spoke about it out loud, that would make it more real, and more real meant heart-ache I didn’t want to feel. Instead, I resorted to playing it down. I could cope with that. “Don’t be ridiculous, Laura. He’s a ghost.”

  “Stranger things have happened, you know. Trust me on that. Spirits are still people. And Elliot is still a man.”

  I slanted my eyes at her, “What are you trying to say?”

  “Look, just because you can’t have a physical relationship doesn’t mean you can’t be creative. There are a whole lot of devices out there you can use. He can watch. You can tease.” She waggled her brows, “He might like it. You never know. You both might like it.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Don’t be ridiculous. I want to help him. That’s all. I’m trying not to like him because I don’t want to hold him back if he has to move on to whatever happens when we move on. I don’t know how he feels about me. I mean, he can’t remember anything about himself. He doesn’t know who he is. He doesn’t even remember that he had a wife. Or a baby. Anyway, it’s crazy to even talk about something that just is not there.” If I said it out loud often enough, I might even be able to believe it.

  “Not so crazy. Cassie, you don’t see what others see. You never have. Always been too busy with your head in a book to look up and see what’s right in front of your nose. He likes you. I’m sure of it. He disappeared because he wants to protect you.”

  “How does he think that disappearing is protecting me? He knows what I have to do to help Henry. He’s the only man who can protect me. Doesn’t he know that?”

  “Well, he’s a man. Men don’t see things as clearly as a woman. Besides, he’s from the twentieth century. Maybe he's being chivalrous.”

  “Chivalrous my arse. It’s called running away, Laura.” I fought off my anger and then realised I was angry at him. He should be here, fighting with me by my side. It was the easiest thing in the world to leave everything behind. Harder to fight. But maybe Laura was right. He wasn’t a man of this century with modern outlooks like mine. Maybe he thought that his absence was better for me. I couldn’t really justify my anger at him. I had no doubt whatever was going in his mind, it was for my protection no matter how it looked to me.

  “To coin a phrase; he’ll be back.”

  “How can you be so sure, when I’m not sure about anything?”

  “Have faith in the universe and it will provide. Just give it time. Give him time. He’s been through a bit of an emotional experience lately. Maybe all he needs is time to understand what's happened to him. Until a few days ago, he didn’t realise he was dead.”

  I couldn’t deny that logic but I wished I had Laura’s faith. I couldn’t start to imagine Elliot’s pain. Not remembering his life. His family. This was all such a mess. I couldn't see any way out of it. I could only concentrate on what I could do. And that was to find Henry’s will, and sort out that mess.

  We pulled up out
the front of Richard’s house. The house was badly run-down. And devoid of life, except for a dreary countenance. As though all happiness had vanished and what was left was just an echo of whatever it must have once been.

  There were weeds in the once garden, now dead and eternally tangled in the iron fence. Rose bushes had been planted at regular intervals along the line of the fence, but they too were no more than colourless sticks. The ground was yellow, with great big dirt patches between stark yellow swirls of cooch grass.

  The house itself was a generic weatherboard in great need of a coat of paint. It would have been white once, but was now a death-pallor grey. There was a veranda that framed the front door, with four or five cracked concrete steps leading up to it. There was an empty planter-pot at the top of the steps looking as though it had been placed and discarded there eons ago. Next to the front door was a lopsided wicker chair that had been open to the elements so much that parts of the matting had disintegrated. The front door was once a Federation green, the window panes either side matching, but the enamel was peeling to reveal weather-roughed wood.

  The house screamed stay-away and that’s exactly what I wished I was doing. If I didn’t have to be here, then I certainly wouldn’t be. We passed through an open section of the front fence that once would have held a gate and walked up to the front door. I used the big black knocker and my hand came away gritty with caked on dirt.

  “Who's there?” The tone of the voice had the same quality as iron grating through a paper shredder.

  “My name’s Cassie Hunter. I’m here with my sister, Laura. Are you Mrs Richards?” I called through the door.

  There was a pause. “Don’t need whatever it is you’re selling.” Footsteps shuffled behind the door.

  “I…I’m not selling anything, Mrs Richards. We just need to talk to you.”

  “Bout what?”

  “It’s a…personal issue. Could you open the door so we can talk more…privately.”

  “Not opening ‘til you tell me what you’re doin’ ‘ere.”

  I glanced at Laura. Her brows rose up her forehead, but she didn’t say anything. Helpful. To the door I said. “It’s about Henry Davis’ will.”