The Ghost Who Fed Them Bones

by Tim Roux

  However, Natalie loitering around does put an implicit pressure on Mike to produce a bed mate too which drives him to flashes of irritation and sudden escapes on unexplained forays into town - we assume. He takes our car, anyway, which is not a problem now that Mum and Dad are back and I can borrow theirs. So far during these holidays Mike has been able to hide his lack of success behind the appearance of his chasing Sarah, not that she would really have noticed him doing anything like that, but the vibes at the restaurant in Béziers with Sarah and Inspector John the other day made it absolutely definite that Mike doesn’t have a hope in hell with her, so I doubt that he has been visiting Freyrargues. He has had Hélène back in Brussels (horse-faced like you wouldn’t believe) waggling her thing at him recently so, while she isn’t really his type, maybe he will console himself with her for a few weeks.

  Mum wants to go on an ayurveda course in India next January, so she is campaigning with Dad to stump up the money, and with us to keep our expenses down, a frugality not matched by her, I notice, given all the new clothes she bought in Cannes and Nice while they were over in Agay. Perhaps that was before she came up with the idea of the course which she absolutely must attend to get away from us and restore her sense of well-being. Dad will give in – he always does. He is such a pushover, and somehow the money always manages to materialise despite our supposedly dire financial position.

  He has definitely started to age over the last couple of years. I worry about him.

  Having said all that, Mike has just returned to the house accompanied by a very chic and sophisticated English woman of twenty-six called Chloe, wherever he found her. Way out of his league, I would have thought, but Natalie is already becoming edgy so maybe he has merely co-opted her temporarily – just long enough to drive Natalie away and restore the traditional family balance.

  He has certainly managed to upset Mum who clearly does not like Chloe at all. Dad is looking wary which suggests that he has his doubts too. The peaceful times are over, I think. Any minute now Natalie will be demanding a lift back home.

  Poor old Mum. She was rejected by Dad’s family outright, so she is trying her very hardest not to lay into Chloe. Any minute now she will either go to lie down with three hours of meditation disks (Extra Strong) or she will explode and blow Chloe all over the walls – quite exciting to watch, but perhaps I should spare her and do the job myself.

  “Paul,” Chloe swivels cultivatedly towards me, “I hear you talk to ghosts.” Her mouth has “trap” engraved on her lips.

  “I can sense them. I cannot talk to them, no. Mike must have got that wrong.”

  Chloe laughs like the tinkle of cut crystal falling on flagstones. “That’s a relief. I’ve got quite enough friends who believe in ghosts already.”

  “And you don’t?”

  “No, I’ve never seen a ghost in my life.”

  “I can tell you where to find one, Chloe, if you like.”

  “I’ll think about that. Can you see auras too?”

  “Yes, I can see auras.”

  “Can you see mine?”

  “Yes.”

  “What colour is it?”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  “I would love to know. You are the first person I have met who has ever said that he can even see it.”

  “Or who has admitted to it, anyway.”

  She sits back. “Is it that awful?”

  “It depends on what you want.”

  “Well, is it the aura of a kind, decent person?”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “No.”

  “So you cannot see it really?”

  “Yes, I can see it.”

  “What does it say about me?”

  “It says that you are rather like me.”

  “Like you? Are you chatting me up, Paul? Michael will be pleased.” Mike is definitely not pleased. “And what are you like, Paul?”

  “Like you, probably.”

  “And what is that?”

  “Spoilt, selfish, arrogant, demanding.”

  “You think I am like that?” she challenges me, affronted or mock-affronted, I cannot tell which, through her thick ironic glaze.

  “No, I think that I am like that.”

  “I find that totally insulting … ” Suddenly she changes her expression and smiles sweetly. “ … to you.”

  Silence, broken by Dad changing the subject with a crashing of gears. “And what are you doing in this part of the world, Chloe? Are you on holiday?”

  “No, I’m a journalist.”

  “A journalist? They still exist in the field?”

  “Yes, there are a few of us left.”

  “And what are you investigating?”

  “The murders up around Montauban. The serial killer.”

  Mike is frowning for another reason now.

  “And why is that of interest to the British press?” Dad continues.

  “One of the victims was British. Her parents moved out here a few years ago.”

  “And you met Mike how?”

  “I’ll be honest.” Honesty is clearly a privilege for the privileged. “I heard that Michael and Paul were in the party that had been there when the corpses were exhumed, so I was looking for them. Finally, I found somebody who knew you and it just so happened that Michael was within pointing distance, so I introduced myself.”

  “You never told me that!” Mike protests.

  “I wonder why. So, Paul, can you talk to ghosts or not?”

  “No, Chloe. We were there accompanying the Earl who can.”

  “Yes, I have heard all about him. Can you introduce me to him?”

  “I don’t think he would appreciate that much.”

  “You could pretend that I am just a friend.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  Chloe is all charm, inlaid with menace. “Paul, it is like business referrals. If you manage to palm me off onto someone else who interests me, I go away.”

  “Maybe we want you to stay anyway,” says Dad confusingly.

  “That’s kind.”

  “So what has happened since the bodies were dug up?” Dad inquires.

  “Don’t you know? Haven’t you been kept informed?”

  “No,” I reply.

  “Well, it was obviously all pretty gruesome.”

  “He certainly seems to have gone on the rampage,” comments Dad.

  “I was referring more to the way they were killed. That is why there is so much press attention. They are besieging the Earl of Affligem’s holiday home as we speak. Obviously I am the first to track you guys down to here. Maybe you should get out quick. So you haven’t heard the police statement of this morning?”

  “No,” I reply again.

  “Do you know what he did to them?”

  “We don’t even know who he is.” The conversation is exclusively between Chloe and me now.

  Chloe takes a deep breath, which is strangely appealing around her chest area. I am getting to like her. “His name is Bertrand Dubois, ironically enough as all his alleged victims were found buried in woods – or it could have been deliberate. He is certainly screwy enough. The victims are all young women, girls really, and they all knew his daughter, Marina, who killed herself nearly nine years ago. This tragedy derailed the whole family, as you might imagine. Mr. Dubois and his wife split up (Marina was their only child), and Bertrand flipped basically. He went raving bonkers. He decided that he wanted to understand where Marina’s soul had gone to when she died so that he would have a chance of tracking it down and, as a surgeon, he suddenly had an idea. It was too late to do anything with Marina because she was dead already, but he could go off in search of the location of the soul in the brain by experimenting on other living people, and who better than the girls he believed to have bullied his daughter to death? He was completely wrong about that, by the way. I have found out that his daughter Marina was a relentless bully in her own right, and she was actually bullying the other girls,
not vice-versa, but that is not the way he understood it. So he tracked down the first girl, Marie-Laure Durand, he kidnapped her, he took her to his cellar which he had set up as an operating theatre, and he started experimenting on her. I am sorry if this shocks you, and I’ll stop if you wish, but basically he dissected her brain while she was still alive and conscious. Nobody knows whether his quest for the seat of the soul was a genuine obsession or just a rationalisation of his desire for revenge, but that is basically what he did with each of the girls until they died and, as I say, one of them, Rosie Fletcher, was British.”

  Natalie’s eyes have almost crossed the room in shock, and the rest of us have all gone completely white.

  “It must have been the most appalling way to die – not that painful but horrifically distressing.” Chloe looks at me first, then Mike. “You must have noticed that the tops of their skulls had been surgically removed.”

  We shake our heads. “We knew that something was up,” Mike comments, “as the forensic team got very excited the minute they saw each body, but we never managed to understand what it was they were on about as they were speaking in whispers and I at least wasn’t looking too closely at the bodies. Paul might have done.”

  “No, me neither,” I add.

  “Well, there you have it, and I am afraid that I have been using you, Michael, although that is not the only reason I was pleased to get to know you, because I was intrigued why two English guys would be among the people searching for the bodies. Then, when you said that Paul could talk to ghosts, Michael, it suddenly made sense.” She turns on me again. “Are you sure that you cannot talk to ghosts, Paul? I am pretty sure that you can. I have an instinct for these sorts of thing.”

  “No, I don’t talk to ghosts, and I am not that keen on talking to journalists either.”

  Chloe becomes coquettish. “I’ll admit that I can if you do.”

  “You can what?” I challenge.

  “Talk to ghosts.”

  “You can?” asks Mum.

  “Yes, I see ghosts all the time, which is a bit of a leg up in my job as a crime reporter. I sometimes get to interview the murder victim. No other journalist can claim that, not that I ever admit to it either, but it does get me a lot of unique facts nobody else gets any wind of at all.”

  “How long have you been seeing ghosts?” asks Mum.

  “All my life. To me, ghosts are just ghosts.”

  She scrutinises me.

  I feel compelled to respond. “To me ghosts are a shiver down my spine.”

  “Pity. But you did say that you knew where a ghost was.”

  (Shit).

  “Yes.”

  “Whose ghost is it?”

  “Nothing to do with this case.”

  “Not at all?”

  “No. It was just a ghost whose presence I sensed in Freyrargues which got everyone all excited and imagining that I could talk to her.”

  Chloe’s eyes narrow. “How do you know it was a ‘her’?”

  “Because the guy who is renting the house I sensed her in keeps finding parts of her body, and the bones are those of a girl called Alice Picard.”

  “Was she murdered?”

  “Quite probably. She disappeared suddenly and hasn’t been seen since, except bit by bit. Her father was arrested a couple of weeks ago for her murder. In fact, the Earl thought it was her body they were looking for near Montauban. She lied to him for some reason.”

  “Why?”

  “Nobody knows. You’ll have to ask the Earl, or her.”

  “Well, as you won’t introduce me to the Earl, will you introduce me to her?”

  “I haven’t a clue where she is, but I can take you to the house I suppose. A retired British policeman lives there. He can probably give you everything you need.”

  “Can we meet up tomorrow, then, Paul, and go over there?”

  “I don’t see why not as long as you keep me out of your paper.”

  “I promise you that. Solemnly.” She holds her hand up as if taking an oath.

  “And the rest of us,” adds Mike.

  “Yes, the whole family, Michael, if you co-operate. Obviously I cannot stop anyone else mentioning you, but they won’t get it from me.”

  “You are most welcome to stay tonight, if you wish, Chloe,” Mum offers, reconciled to this pushy so-and-so after all.

  Chloe seems quite taken aback. “Oh,” she says, “I would like that very much. Thank you.”

  * * *

  Later in the evening Chloe catches me on my own in the relative dark of the garden.

  “OK, Paul, you can tell me the truth. You have spoken with this dead girl too, haven’t you? I know that you have a gift with supernatural phenomena, your mother too. It takes one to know one.”

  I remain silent.

  She starts flirting with me. “What do I have to do to persuade you to confess?” She fingers the collar of my polo shirt, teasingly as she sees it, irritatingly as I interpret it. I hate anybody’s hands near my face unsolicited. That’s it, I think. You can pay for all this.

  “You can sleep with Mike,” I declare starkly.

  “I’m sorry,” she replies, shocked.

  “You can sleep with Mike. Do what you were leading him on to do in order to get at us.”

  “He is really very sweet, but … ”

  “That is my deal,” I insist. “You sleep with Mike and I will take you to see Alice, and I want to hear whimpers of ecstasy from both of you. No faking it or, if you fake it, make it convincing.”

  “Do you always pimp for your brother?”

  “No, never, but this time you have asked for it.”

  “You really are a tough negotiator.” She shakes her head in wonderment. “Actually, I would rather sleep with you. You are more my type.”

  “I am taken, thanks.”

  “You really are like me, aren’t you?”

  “Possibly, although I only said that to annoy you.”

  “I got the impression that you were telling the truth. Can you really see my aura?”

  “Yes.”

  “What colour is it?”

  “Well, it is all sorts of colours, but it had a strong layer of dark orangey-red earlier - a bit muddy too.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “A lot of anger and defensiveness. Neurotic, basically.”

  “Charming.”

  “It’s your aura. I am just telling you what it looks like.”

  “And now?”

  “Orangey-red still, but clearer. Some blue in there too.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “You are in love.”

  “In love?”

  “Or loving.”

  She smirks. “You think I am in love with you?”

  “I hope not.”

  She smiles, genuinely this time, quite girlishly. “Actually, maybe you are right, Paul. You do feel like a soul mate.”

  I shrug. “I had better get back to Natalie, otherwise she will get bored or jealous or something, and demand to go home.”

  “Have you and Natalie been going out long?”

  “We broke up a few weeks ago.”

  “But got back together again.”

  “No.”

  “So she is more of a fuck-buddy, is she?”

  “Delicately put.”

  “I can relate to that.”

  “Relate to Mike, then.”

  “Maybe I shall”.

  And she does. I didn’t hear the passion, but they both look very relaxed in the morning. We are off to see Alice, then, Chloe and I, I suppose.

  * * *

  Alice is in the old barn. I have left Chloe momentarily outside. Alice comes rushing over to me. “Where have you been, Paul?”

  “Went back to Valflaunès for a bit.”

  “And couldn’t be bothered to come and see me.”

  “I was busy. Sorry.”

  “Are you angry with me?”

  “Why would I be angry?”

  “Bec
ause I misled you about the body.”

  “I am sure that you had your reasons.”

  “I did. The girls were screaming out for revenge, but couldn’t find anyone to talk to, and then I found you. I didn’t think that you would lift a finger for them, but if you thought it was me … ”

  “Kind of you … ”

  “Would you have done, if you thought you would be looking for their bodies and not mine?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Anyway, it is done now, and they are all very happy. Well, as happy as they can be anyway, given that they have been deprived of their whole lives.”

  “And you?”

  “I am very happy to see you.”

  “I am happy to see you too.” And, surprisingly to me, I really am. I have forgotten how cute Alice is. “I am afraid I have brought somebody else to see you too,” I confess.

  Alice looks disappointed. She wants to spend the time alone with me. “Who is that?”

  “She is a British journalist. She wants to interview you.”

  “Through you?”

  “No, directly. She claims that she can see ghosts too and communicate with them.”

  Alice gestures towards the doors. “Let’s put her to the test then. Is she a girlfriend of yours?”

  “Not in the least.” I say it so flatly that she believes me instantly.

  “All right, then. Go and get her.”

  Chloe comes into the barn searching all around her diffidently in the sombre light. When she recognises Alice, she starts. Actually, she screams slightly. Alice immediately screams back, mockingly, then steps forward and holds out her hand. “Hello, I am Alice Picard. Well, I used to be.”

  “Chloe Burton. Still am,” Chloe replies.