by Darren Shan
Twenty-seven. I recall how young I thought she was when we first met. I had her pegged for twenty-something. Later she convinced me that she was in her early forties, which is the age she would be. If she was alive.
There were photos of the Turk with some of his lovers. None could pass for his wife’s double. I went back further and found snaps of his old flames, but no one who looked like Andeanna.
Maybe one of the Turk’s foes found a doppelgänger, briefed her on Andeanna’s past and set her up to frame me. But why go to such lunatic lengths? There are far easier ways to kill a man. It makes no sense. Unless . . .
Unless I was another Sebastian Dash. Perhaps the Turk’s enemy was on the inside and needed a fall guy. That would explain how Andeanna was able to get in and out of the mansion. She might have been working for Bond Gardiner or one of the Turk’s other trusted aides, someone who had to distance themselves from the murder, by weaving as complex a web as possible.
So many theories, each more warped than the one before. I groan and push myself away from the photos, the papers, the computer, and head back to the hotel. On the way, I find myself digging out my phone and dialling Joe’s number. I get his voicemail. As much as I hate leaving messages, I croak, ‘It’s Ed. I need to talk. Please call me or come to the hotel. It’s important.’
It’s wrong to involve Joe. However perilous the situation was before, it’s ten times as likely to end in disaster now. But I need someone to bounce ideas off, a friend to steer me straight. I’m going crazy on my own. Literally.
In my room, I ignore the notes and photocopies which have consumed my last few days and nights, and instead of poring over them, I sit by the window and stare at the sky. For once, the ghosts leave me alone. I doubt they feel sorry for me. They probably just want to give me some quiet time, to soften me up, before launching a fresh offensive.
A couple of hours later, I haven’t moved. I’m chewing on my fingernails when someone knocks on the door. I cross the room suspiciously and open the door a crack. For a split second I think it’s Andeanna, and my hopes flare. Then my eyes focus and it’s just Joe, looking bemused. ‘You rang, m’lord?’
‘Thanks for coming.’ I let him in.
Joe stares around at the mess. ‘Is everything OK?’
‘No,’ I choke. ‘Everything’s fucking horrible.’
It’s insanity, but I tell him the whole story, about my past, Andeanna, the Turk, Axel Nelke, Sebastian Dash, the murder. I tell him things that I didn’t even tell the fake Andeanna, talking for the first time ever about my ghosts. Joe listens silently, asking no questions, though his eyes flicker nervously when I describe my ever-present shades. At the end, exhausted, I trickle to a halt and await his response.
Without saying anything, he walks to the bathroom. He’s in there ten minutes. When he returns, his face is damp, pearls of water glistening on his moustache and beard. He shakes his head and says, ‘Was that the truth, Ed?’
‘You think I’d make up something that crazy?’
‘You’re a writer. Crazy plots are your life. Maybe this is a new idea for a book and you’re testing it out on me to see how –’
‘It’s true,’ I stop him. ‘Every word. No bullshit.’
He sinks into a chair. ‘You killed people.’
‘Yes.’
‘That crap about not having my name associated with the book — was that to keep me out of this, to keep me safe?’
‘Yes.’
‘Thanks,’ he says drily.
‘I couldn’t involve you. If something went wrong and you’d been sucked in . . . ’
‘So why involve me now?’
‘I had nobody else to turn to,’ I answer honestly.
‘Hah!’ Joe grins.
‘You can leave if you want. You don’t have to stay.’
‘After the story you’ve spun? I couldn’t walk away from a mystery like this, as you well know, you manipulative bastard.’
‘Do you hate me?’
‘Yes.’ He jumps to his feet. ‘But we’ll get into that another time. First we have to figure out what’s going on. Show me your notes. Maybe there’s something you’ve missed. That is why you asked me over here, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ I say, shamefaced.
‘Then let’s not dilly-dally, as the actress said to the bishop.’ He strides to the nearest stack of papers then glances back at me. ‘If it’s any comfort, I’d have called for help too in your shoes.’
‘Thanks,’ I smile.
‘But that doesn’t mean it’s right,’ he growls. ‘It just means I’m as dumb and selfish as you.’
With midnight approaching, we break for a coffee. Joe is as confused by now as I am. He favours the impostor theory, but proposes a new twist on who might have put her up to it. ‘Maybe there was no middleman. What if this was personal, her looking to get even with Menderes? Let’s say she was his mistress and he pissed her off. She finds out who you really are and –’
‘How?’ I interrupt. ‘I don’t advertise it in the biography on my website.’
‘People have a way of discovering things when they go looking for answers,’ he says. ‘She learns the truth about you and cons you into falling in love with her and killing Menderes, having passed herself off as his dead wife to make sure the shit couldn’t rebound and stick to her.’
‘But she looks so much like the woman in the photos,’ I mutter.
‘Maybe they were related,’ Joe says, then his face lights up. ‘Maybe that’s it! A younger sister or daughter who wanted to kill Menderes for the way he treated his wife when she was alive.’
‘The papers said she was an only child, and they didn’t mention any children apart from Gregory.’
‘Every family has secrets, Ed. Maybe she had another kid when she was too young to wed. The daughter grows up, finds out that Menderes used to bully her mother, comes looking for revenge.’
‘You’re stretching, Joe.’
‘Sometimes the truth is so weird, you have to stand on your toes and reach at full stretch to touch it.’
‘Very poetic,’ I commend him.
‘You don’t buy it?’
I sigh. ‘It’s thin.’
Joe thinks again. ‘There’s another explanation,’ he says softly. ‘She might have been . . . ’ He stops and pulls a face.
‘A ghost?’ I finish for him. Joe nods glumly and looks away. ‘No,’ I whisper. ‘Ghosts aren’t real.’
Joe gawps at me. ‘How can you say that, having just told me about your own private posse?’
I chuckle sickly. ‘Just because I see them, it doesn’t mean they’re real.’
‘You think you’re crazy?’ Joe asks.
‘I don’t want to be,’ I mutter. ‘That’s why I went down the investigative road in the first place, to try to prove they were real, that there is an afterlife, that the shades of the dead can come back. That seemed preferable to accepting the fact that I’d lost my mind.’
‘Now you’d rather be mad?’ Joe sniffs.
I shrug. ‘No. But having searched for proof for so long without finding any, I can’t believe that it would drop into my lap in such astonishing fashion. Besides, even if my ghosts are real, Andeanna was different. She was flesh and blood, not a phantom. Other people saw her.’
‘I never saw her,’ Joe reminds me.
‘Waiters saw her, cab drivers, Axel Nelke.’
Joe squints. ‘Maybe she found a way to come back from the dead and take physical shape, like the guy in Spirit of the Fire.’
I laugh harshly. ‘Don’t be stupid.’
‘Hey, it’s your theory,’ he retorts. ‘We know that Andeanna Menderes burnt to death. What if she was a victim of spontaneous human combustion? She dies traumatically, her spirit can’t rest, she returns in a new body, seeking revenge on the husband she hated . . . ’
‘That was a plot device,’ I growl. ‘I treated it seriously because when you write, you have to make the world of the story seem as real as possible
. But I know what’s real and what’s not. If you can’t tell the difference, maybe you should –’
‘Hold on,’ Joe interrupts hotly. ‘I never saw this dream lover of yours. For all I know, she never existed and you’re completely gone in the head. You say that waiters and taxi drivers saw her, but maybe you imagined them as well. Hell, maybe I’m not real. You could be sitting here arguing with yourself and . . . ’ He grinds to a halt and scratches an ear. ‘I lost the run of that, didn’t I?’
‘You were going good until you tried to write yourself off,’ I smile.
‘But you get my point. Logically I should disregard everything you say and call in the men in the white coats. But you’re my friend. I’d rather believe in a ghost than denounce you as a lunatic.’
‘You’re right,’ I sigh. ‘Sorry for snapping. Truth is, I’m not so sure of my sanity. That’s why I want to keep things as level as possible. If I head down crazy paths, I don’t know where I’ll end up.’
‘OK,’ Joe says. ‘I’ll lay off the ghost angle. But can I ask you one more thing before I let it lie?’
‘What?’
‘Did you . . . ’ His cheeks redden. ‘Did you have sex with her?’ I silently count to ten before replying. ‘Why do you want to know?’
‘Your ghosts are silent, ineffective, insubstantial things, but that doesn’t mean that every wandering spirit must be. I think a more advanced ghost could pass for human in all sorts of ways, fake the look, scent, maybe even the feel of a person. But in the most intimate of couplings, when it’s just the two of you, everything’s been laid bare and you’re exploring every last inch of your lover’s body? I can’t imagine a phantasm managing to be that convincing.’
I think of my asexual relationship with Andeanna. The lines she fed me about the Turk and her gynaecologist. How I never even saw her naked.
I call it a night.
FIFTEEN
I ask Joe to find out everything he can about Andeanna Menderes, her background, family, associates. I tell him to track down distant relatives, old friends, anyone who was close to her. Try to find people who might have known the new version of her.
‘Start with that beautician, Shar, who was celebrating her birthday the night we met,’ I advise him. ‘Talk to your friends who were at the party. Take a photo of Andeanna with you, show it round and ask if anyone remembers seeing a woman who looked like that.’
While Joe is exploring the Andeanna angle, I check out Dash’s safe house. It looks deserted. No car in the drive. Curtains open. I should stake it out for a day or two to be safe, but I don’t feel like wasting time, so I slip around back and let myself in with the spare set of keys which I kept.
I move cautiously through the rooms. No clear signs that Dash has been here – the bed is stripped, the chairs stacked neatly against the walls, the heating turned off – but there’s a slab of cheese by the bread bin that wasn’t there before, and a can of beans in a cupboard under the sink. Peculiar of Dash to leave behind even these slight reminders of his stay. Maybe he left in a panic.
From the safe house I make my way north, where I spend the next three days doing the rounds of every seedy-looking pub and club, making contact with low-level gangsters. I call myself Edgar Sanders and pretend to be a journalist doing a piece about Mikis Menderes. I buy drinks for anyone who’ll chat with me. Many are eager to add to the Menderes legend and be associated with him in some small way, so most talk with me freely.
They tell me all sorts of juicy stories, how Mikis drove out into the countryside every once in a while to chop the heads off sheep, the time he ate the prize poodle of someone who was slow to repay a loan, his incredible sex drive. (‘He once had twelve women on the go at the same time,’ a pickpocket called Ernie tells me. ‘That’s what I call a dirty dozen!’) Entertaining tales, but nothing about who killed him or why he might have been executed.
Finally, in the Star and Anchor, a grim, grey place that’s at odds with its name, I run into a member of Bond Gardiner’s gang, a youthful but grey-haired man called John Horan, who shoots a mean game of pool. After letting him thrash me a couple of times, I ask if he’s heard any strange stories about how the Turk was killed.
‘What sort of stories?’ John snaps warily.
‘I heard it was suicide and someone made it look like an assassination to big up the Turk’s legend.’
‘Bullshit.’
‘I guessed as much,’ I sigh. ‘I mean, how can you trust a guy who builds a conspiracy theory out of a pair of shoes? I should have known he was –’
‘What’s that about shoes?’ John interrupts.
‘Some crazy shit about Menderes’s laces. I shouldn’t even have –’
‘Go on,’ John says tightly.
‘Well, this guy said he knew a journalist who works for The Times, and he said he saw a pair of shoes in a photo and the lace on one of them wasn’t tied.’
‘So?’ John sniffs, eyeing me beadily.
‘According to him, it’s something people do when they kill themselves, if they don’t want to leave a note. They tie the lace on one shoe but not the other. It’s a way of letting people know it wasn’t an accident.’
John laughs, at ease again. ‘That’s the dumbest thing I’ve heard all week.’
‘Yes,’ I chuckle ruefully. ‘But I figured I might as well ask.’
‘You should be careful,’ John warns me. ‘Loose talk like that can earn you a slap round here. If I was you, I’d keep shit about laces to myself.’
And after that, I do, since I know by his reaction that the laces were noted. I’m not sure what happened to Dash, whether he escaped or was taken down, but that’s unimportant. It’s enough to know that Bond and his men have swallowed the bait. I can forget about Dash and focus on hunting for the ghostlike Andeanna.
Joe hasn’t discovered a secret sister or daughter. He’s done a remarkable job of assembling a family tree, filling half a scrapbook with names, dates of birth, photographs and details. I go through the photos several times, with a magnifying glass, but none of Andeanna’s relatives is close enough in looks or age to pass for the woman I knew and loved.
‘I called several of them,’ Joe says, ‘pretending to be a reporter, asking about her past, her life with the Turk. Most were happy to talk about her, but nobody had much contact with her after she married Menderes.’
‘What about friends?’
‘Plenty from the past, but not a one from her London years. It seems like the Turk kept her locked away from everybody.’
I flick through the pages, admiring Joe’s research skills, then thumb back to the first page and the photos of Andeanna’s parents. Her mother died nine years ago. Her father is alive and living alone. ‘Did you check if Deleena Emerson had any other children?’
‘There’s no record of it,’ Joe replies.
‘But did you ask?’
He shakes his head. ‘It’s not the sort of thing you can say to strangers. I asked if Andeanna had brothers or sisters and they all said she didn’t.’
‘What about her father?’
‘He wouldn’t speak to me. He doesn’t discuss his daughter.’
‘If anyone knows, it would be him.’
‘True. But if he doesn’t want to talk about it . . . ’
‘He’ll talk,’ I grunt.
Joe squints at me. ‘Ed, you wouldn’t . . . I mean, you aren’t going to do anything illegal, are you? I don’t want to be part of –’
‘Don’t worry,’ I stop him. ‘Violence isn’t my style.’
Joe snorts. ‘This from an assassin?’
‘Ex-assassin,’ I grin bleakly. ‘But even back then I didn’t rough anyone up. I killed, I didn’t torture.’
‘Interesting distinction,’ Joe mutters, but pushes the point no further. ‘There was one other thing.’
‘Yes?’
‘Andeanna’s death. You know how the police say she veered off the road and crashed, the car burst into flames and she couldn’t get out?�
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‘What about it?’
‘There were no on-hand witnesses, but a few drivers in the distance saw the car careen down the bank. One of them, Marian Fitzgerald, said she saw flames in the car before it hit the trees and exploded.’
‘So?’
‘The forensic guys who examined the wreckage couldn’t explain why the car left the road in the first place. Given the Marian Fitzgerald evidence, I got to thinking that maybe . . . ’ He stalls.
‘Go on,’ I quietly urge him.
‘Could it have been SHC?’
‘I thought we’d dismissed that theory,’ I snap impatiently.
He shrugs. ‘I know there’s probably nothing to it. I was tossing out wild ideas the first time I brought this up. But when I read the report, it made me wonder. I started thinking about something you’d said, about how the impostor had known you were an assassin.’
‘People knew,’ I mutter. ‘Not many, but a few. One of them must have told Andeanna or whoever hired her to con me.’
‘More than likely,’ Joe says. ‘But if we admit the possibility that she might be a ghost — I’m only saying might, don’t lose your temper!’
‘Go on,’ I sigh wearily.
‘If she spontaneously combusted and came back as a ghost,’ Joe continues, ‘maybe she was drawn to you by the research you were doing. Your mind was fixated on the subject. She might have been able to tap into that. Or . . . hell, Ed, I know this is a long shot, but maybe you brought her back to life.’
‘What are you talking about?’ I gawp.
‘If Pierre Vallance has the power to channel mental waves and convert them into voices, maybe you have a similar talent. Maybe you unwittingly gave form to Andeanna, the way you gave limited form to your other ghosts. She dies horribly, some residue of her circles the streets of London all these years, you hit town, her spirit gravitates towards you, you somehow give her back her body, she seizes her opportunity and uses you to take revenge on the man she hated.’
I consider Joe’s crazy proposal. Because he’s my friend and I know he means well, I treat it seriously. ‘What was the state of her corpse when they found it?’
