Ghost Girl

by Thomson, Lesley

  ‘Her son was Michael Thornton, a sweet little thing killed in a fatac in the sixties. Hit and run, driver never traced. My editor wanted it revived to spice up her suicide. Boy with the face of an angel who brought joy and laughter eeecetarah! Story had traction: sixties nostalgia, heartbroken mother, empty swing.’ She stopped and, uncurling from the sofa, returned to the dresser and sloshed vodka over the melting ice cubes. No tonic this time, Jack noticed. Everything in the woman’s behaviour added weight to Stella’s theory. Almost everything.

  ‘Did you know that when you moved here?’ He risked the question.

  ‘What are you, my psychiatrist? Listen Jackaranda, I’m not superstitious and I’m not easily freaked, but this house is toxic. It’s cold even with that fire lit. Look at you all wrapped up in that lovely coat.’ She had not answered his question.

  Jack pulled his coat tighter. The room was chilly. It was evening now and a dreary grey light penetrated the faux lattice windows.

  ‘She never got over her baby boy dying. No one did.’ Lucie stopped still. ‘The sanctity of sons! Bet your mother loves you!’ She meandered back to the sofa and plonked down beside him, spilling her drink.

  ‘Not sure you ever get over the death of a loved one,’ Jack said.

  ‘I wouldn’t know, no one sticks around long enough to die on me. I’ve wanted to kill a few in my time.’ She patted her short blonde hair. ‘Michael Thornton haunts me day and night.’ She glared at Jack as if he too were a ghost.

  ‘When did Michael die?’ Jack wanted her to flesh out the facts. ‘You said he was a sweet boy. Did you know him?’ He held his breath.

  ‘Figuratively speaking. He was before my time! My predecessor covered it in his size-ten hobnailed boots. It was the year the Moors Murderers went down so there was a hue and cry about kiddies. Sixty-six. Clot angled it that the mother was at work when the boy came home from school, a “latchkey” boy fending for himself.’ She used Jack’s thigh to lever herself up and wove over to the French doors. ‘They got sackfuls of irate letters about the mum not being fit to have kids. Blah blah blah. Enough to drive her to top herself. It’s a wonder it wasn’t sooner.’

  ‘When you went to the police about Marquis Way, who did you speak to?’ Jack asked airily.

  ‘Questions! You don’t need my help to doorstep anyone! Most of them avoid me even when I help them. It was Terry Darnell, one of the sharper knives in the drawer, always up for a goss at the Ram, that place by the river? A charmer like you is all I shall say, me lud.’ She tapped the side of her nose.

  She opened the French doors and stepped outside into the garden. Jack went too. Who was charming whom? Terry Darnell had known what he was doing.

  ‘This was Michael’s’. She raised her glass at the swing. ‘It’s bad luck to move it and bad luck to leave it. I’m stuck with the bloody thing. Stuck with this place too. Puts buyers off.’

  ‘Most people wouldn’t know the history.’ They would feel it. Jack was grateful to be in the sunshine.

  ‘We buy houses with our hearts not our heads. Never mind damp, dry rot or subsidence, we draw a line at the corpse in the lounge and the dead brother on the swing.’

  ‘Brother?’

  ‘Son, husband, brother. The place is tainted.’ She gave her raucous laugh. ‘Mother never left her home after he died. Not until it was feet first.’

  ‘How did he die?’ Jack trod carefully as an idea took shape.

  She scowled. ‘Sneaked out for sweets.’

  Jack looked at the house. The suburban Edwardian villa, apparently benign and homely, leaked profound pain from every brick. Had he come into the garden on one of his night walks he would have known a Host lived here.

  ‘They spent a whack on a fuck-off monument at Hammersmith Cemetery. St Michael, an angel like the boy. It creeps you out.’ She stomped over to the fence, close to the mosaic under the holly bush. ‘You go to Jamie’s grave?’

  ‘I prefer to look after the living.’ Keep up. He had forgotten his supposed link with the dead driver.

  ‘You saying a girl made this gave you away.’ Lucille May aimed a kick at the mosaic, dislodging a chip of glass. ‘Sure you won’t join me in a quick drink, darling?’

  ‘I should be going.’ Jack longed to restore the glass to the mosaic, but Lucille would interpret it as a criticism. He hadn’t said a girl had made it, he had used the word ‘child’. ‘Gave what away, Lucie?’

  ‘First law of journalism, don’t steal from others.’ She pouted her lips and ground the glass into the soil. ‘I’ve had it up to here with effing journos.’

  ‘How long did you say you’ve lived here?’ Jack held her gaze.

  ‘I didn’t, sweetheart.’ She shook her glass, making the remaining ice cubes spin around the bottom. ‘You could call it a lifetime.’

  ‘Where is Mr Thornton now? Were there any other children?’ No point in holding back now. She had his measure.

  ‘Dead. And he was an only child.’ Lucille May eyed her glass. ‘Like Robert Smith.’

  ‘I could sort through your material on the accidents? Put it in order? It’s the kind of thing I do.’

  ‘And steal my story?’ She looked her age, raddled and tired in the cold evening light. Her eyes were watery, as if she might cry.

  ‘I don’t have your narrative skills, Lucie. I’m just good at tidying up.’ Jack touched her elbow and then let his hand drop.

  ‘What a lovely man.’ She stumbled on a tussock and steadied herself on his arm. ‘I’m going to trust you. Just pull it together then I’ll be off and running.’

  Jack closed the French doors. He looked back at the garden. The swing was moving.

  58

  Saturday, 5 May 2012

  ‘Your dad was the attending officer.’ Jack had Lucille May’s file open on his lap. ‘Michael Thornton must have been one of his first fatalities. Lucie gave Terry the lead on this case, be it unwittingly.’ Jack had told Stella what the journalist had said. He left out the hint that there had been more between them.

  ‘Why is she living there if she hates it?’ Stella parked along from a Mini outside the cemetery gates. Saturdays were shopping and chores; she supposed tomorrow would be busier. Jack had done an extra shift on the District line during the day on Friday. She had picked him up by the statue of the Leaning Woman on the Great West Road. Beyond his text assuring her he was fine, they had not discussed the case since Jack’s second visit to Lucille May’s on Thursday.

  ‘She’s a journalist stuck with a story that she can’t write and can’t abandon. I think it’s got to her. She doesn’t have the drive to operate a campaign of murder, pardon the pun.’ Jack thrust a faded photostat at Stella. She sniffed stale ink on the shiny paper, and read the paragraph of blurred type from Terry’s report.

  I arrived at the location – Young’s Corner, south side of King Street, ten yards from traffic lights, at 15.47 hours. I confirmed that the victim, a male child (dressed in shorts, shirt, one sandal thrown off during incident), was fatally hurt. Checked for vital life signs. I covered him with my jacket. I radioed for an ambulance and police. The vehicle involved in the collision did not stop at the scene. No one present had witnessed the accident. A customer in the hardware shop ten yards east of the location reported a grey car travelling at speed. He could not give the make or the model. Stated was a grey saloon.

  ‘Lucille May knows more than she’s let on. Look at all this. Weird that she gave it to you. Did she say anything else about my— about Terry?’ Stella looked out of the window at Hammersmith Cemetery. Michael Thornton was buried there. Her dad would have gone to the funeral, probably in the black suit her mum said was past its best when it was new. He would have stood a distance from the graveside ceremony. He’d have made a silent promise to find Michael’s killer; he never had.

  Someone else had made that promise too.

  ‘Come on.’ Stella got out of the van without waiting for Jack to reply.

  Hammersmith Cemetery was a half-mile squ
are and bounded by railings partially obscured within bushes. Although sprawling between the traffic-clogged South Circular and the Lower Richmond Road the graves and mausoleums were shrouded within a breath-held quiet. Despite the strong morning sunshine, Stella zipped up her anorak against an insidious chill.

  ‘Opened in 1926 as an overspill for Margravine Cemetery.’ Jack paced down the central path reading aloud from his phone. ‘The graves are on the lawn principle with a concrete strip at the head of the plot. That means you don’t need to wait for the soil to settle before installing the headstone.’ He sounded chirpy. Telling her about his visit to Lucille May’s he had been oddly upbeat and optimistic. This rather annoyed Stella; he was there to gather facts, not enjoy himself.

  ‘After a coffin’s in the hole and the soil replaced, there’s ten per cent of the earth left over. Think how much soil that is in a place this size.’

  ‘There are hundreds of graves. We need an index of burials.’ Stella headed for a brick chapel halfway along the path. A chain was looped through iron handles on the doors barring access and there was no sign of a warden. She went on a few metres to where an intersection offered three directions.

  ‘Look out for an angel.’ Jack scanned the acres stretching before them.

  ‘That narrows it nicely,’ Stella muttered. ‘I can already see four.’

  Jack jogged along the left-hand path to an angel with outspread wings. ‘First World War casualty.’ He darted across the grass to the next one.

  None of the angels marked the grave of Michael Thornton. Without conferring, they struck off along a track from the central avenue. The sun had gone behind a stratum of cloud, casting a flat light that left no shadow.

  They were in a secluded section of the cemetery. The silence intensified. Letters on headstones were missing or worn away. What dates Stella could decipher were from the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Coarse grass and creeping foliage disguised plots long untended. The path lost definition and petered away. Stella forgot to look for an angel. Unable to shake off a growing unease, she trudged mechanically behind Jack.

  ‘Oh!’ He stopped; Stella trod on his heel. He snatched at the sleeve of her anorak. A figure was framed against the lowering sky.

  Stella was about to pull Jack back the way they had come when he set off at a run towards the person. He leapt over grave edgings and tussocks, his coat like black wings. She lost sight of him behind a clump of bushes.

  Stella blundered after Jack, crashing through undergrowth, blood pulsing in her ears.

  Jack was dwarfed by the tallest statue Stella had ever seen. It was at least fifteen feet high. Upon a tiered plinth, she read:

  IN LOVING MEMORY OF

  MICHAEL

  AGED 7

  15TH MARCH 1959 – 6TH MAY 1966

  BELOVED CHILD OF

  ROBERT AND JEAN THORNTON

  ‘WHO IS LIKE UNTO GOD’

  ‘BONNY AND BLITHE AND GOOD AND GAY’

  ‘Their grief is palpable,’ Jack breathed. The statue was enclosed by a marble ledge a foot high, wide enough to fit a car on. The enclosed space was filled with green chips of glass.

  ‘“And the child that is born on the Sabbath day is bonny and blithe and good and gay.”’ Jack stepped on to the base. He scooped up a handful of glass. ‘I have the same birthday as Michael.’

  ‘That would make you older than me.’ Stella didn’t need Jack and his signs now.

  ‘The date, not the day.’ He examined the glass. ‘This is the same grade aggregate as ours.’

  ‘How can you know?’ But Stella knew it was.

  ‘These markings like rainbows?’ He held up a piece between thumb and forefinger. ‘Glass grinding against glass. Our man comes here before his next murder and each time he takes seven pieces.’

  ‘Would be more practical to take more and save the journeys.’

  ‘He must return each time.’

  Stella didn’t like it when Jack talked as if he knew the killer. ‘Why?’

  ‘To pay a forfeit to the angel. To atone.’ He sprinkled the glass back on to the grave. ‘I was born on a Tuesday.’

  Stella gave a start. The angel’s eyes were admonishing. She knew about the database printout. Stella could never undo what she had done. ‘I thought angels were nice.’ She said this more to herself.

  ‘Tuesday’s child is full of grace.’ Jack settled beside her. ‘When were you born?’

  ‘The twelfth of August 1966. What’s this to do with Michael Thornton?’

  ‘Which day?’

  ‘No idea. Michael can’t have been that good or gay, you said he sneaked out without permission to get sweets.’

  ‘Not a capital offence. Three police officers were shot on the day you were born, you said that was why Terry didn’t get to the hospital to see you.’ He fiddled with his phone.

  Anxious to avoid the angel’s penetrating stare, Stella trudged behind the statue. The sense of recrimination did not lessen. ‘Surely this thing contravenes the height regulation.’ She heard a rustle in the bushes. It was an animal but still it made her skin creep.

  ‘You were born on a Friday.’ Jack put away his phone. ‘“Friday’s child is loving and giving.”’ He nodded at Stella. ‘That’s you.’

  ‘Ha ha.’ Stella shot him a look, but he appeared to be serious. ‘Aren’t angels supposed to be guardians? This one is like a prison guard. The sculptor was having an off-day.’ She stirred the glass with her boot, expecting to expose soil. There was more glass. Whoever was taking it from here would not run out.

  ‘This angel is for a beloved son. No expense spared. That expression of recrimination is not the artist lacking inspiration, it signifies that someone must pay for the death of sweet baby Michael.’ Jack put up his coat collar. ‘If we stay it will be us.’

  Stella was generally immune to Jack’s quirky impressions, but not this time. He had used the word ‘recrimination’, a word she had just applied to herself. The angel would make her pay.

  Jack stood in front of the statue. ‘Someone’s tried to stop her.’

  Stella joined him. The angel’s arms were slightly raised, exposing thin wrists peeping from the folds of a flowing gown. The wrists ended abruptly. Her hands were missing.

  ‘Vandalism.’ In the grey afternoon light the severed ends resembled fractured bone.

  ‘No.’ Jack stroked the marble. ‘It’s a sheer slice. It was premeditated. Cold calculation.’

  Stella had cleaned up wanton damage after burglaries or parties that had got out of hand. This was a colder act. ‘Who would do this?’

  ‘The Archangel Michael defeated Satan and kicked him out of heaven. Satan escaped to earth,’ Jack said under his breath. ‘St Michael is his enemy.’

  ‘The Fallen Angel.’ Stella caught echoes of a patchy religious education. ‘Michael Thornton committed a sin, you mean?’

  ‘No, Michael’s with God. Whoever removed the angel’s hands wanted to fracture the power of his guardian angel.’

  ‘That doesn’t fit with our theory that the murderer is taking revenge on drivers who have run over children.’ Stella squatted down and combed her fingers through the glass.

  ‘The Book of Revelation is stuffed with sevens: John’s message for seven churches, seven trumpets, seven seals and the final portent when seven angels each bring a plague.’

  ‘More sevens.’ Stella hadn’t read the Book of Revelation. ‘Sunday is the seventh day of the week,’ she offered.

  ‘Sunday!’ Stell, you are an angel! Let’s see your matrix.’

  Stella swung her rucksack off her shoulder and found the spreadsheet tucked in her Filofax. She kept her back to the angel.

  ‘The tenth of November, when my erstwhile friend Jamie Markham was killed, is a Sunday and it equals seven.’ Jack sat cross-legged on the glass beside her.

  ‘Charlie Hampson’s doesn’t, we know this. But—’ Stella nudged him. ‘Hampson was killed on Michael Thornton’s birthday!’

  Jack jump
ed out and went over to the angel. ‘Of the seven deaths we know about, four are in mid-March and one at the end of March, the month of Michael’s birthday.’

  ‘Lucie said one of the children, Robert Smith, died on the fifth of November, five days before Jamie on the tenth. Mrs Thornton killed herself on the fifteenth, the same day Myra Hindley died.’ Jack got out his phone. ‘The Daily Mirror’s headline was “Gone But Not Forgiven”. There has to be a link.’

  ‘Myra Hindley is one person who can’t be guilty of these crimes.’

  ‘Lucie made me think. Why did Mrs Thornton wait so long before killing herself?’

  ‘Lucille May also said some things are only coincidence.’ Stella swung her rucksack on to her back. ‘It was the first time Mrs Thornton succeeded, odds on she had tried before.’

  ‘What if she’s our killer? She realized with Jamie Markham’s death that nothing had changed, her son was still dead. She saw the futility and ended it all.’

  ‘Good thought!’ Stella looked at the spreadsheet. ‘Only the shoe man Harvey Gray and Charles Hampson died after she committed suicide.’

  Jack had been looking at his phone. ‘Michael was killed on the day the Moors murderers were sentenced to life. Lucie told me. That day Mrs Thornton’s life effectively ended. Hindley dying brought it all back. She couldn’t bear it.’

  Suzie had told her that after the Moors murders Terry had vowed never to let his own child out of his sight. Impossible. Finally he left his daughter altogether. Men bottled up feelings for their children. Marian said Joel Evans’s father punched a wall and broke his finger when he heard his son was dead. ‘We’re forgetting something.’

  ‘Likely. My brain’s on overload.’

  ‘Joel Evans.’ Stella flipped through her diary. ‘The boy killed outside Marks and Spencer’s on King Street.’

  ‘So we are!’ Jack grasped the angel’s wrists as if he might heal them.

  ‘Monday the twenty-third of April. The day I found the blue folder.’

  ‘Wasn’t it a hit and run?’

  ‘A man gave himself up later. I was there when Marian was told.’