How to Seduce a Ghost

by Hope McIntyre

  “Has that little blond creature who was living here found a new home?” Felicity asked me.

  “Yes,” I said. “At least I’ve taken her in for the time being.”

  “Thank God she left when she did.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, she must have gone out just before her summerhouse went up in smoke. She was here when I arrived on New Year’s Eve. Then I went off to pick up some stuff from the market and when I returned, she’d gone. The summerhouse was empty.”

  “You were here, Felicity, on New Year’s Eve?” I couldn’t believe it. She must have been the woman the witness had seen.

  “Only for a second. I was dropping off that little statue over there.” She pointed to a tiny stone cherub standing on the ground beside one of the blackened shrubs. I’d never even noticed it. “I was doing some work in a garden in Dorset and I found it there. They said they didn’t want it so I thought it would look wonderful beside the birdbath here in your mother’s garden. I could have sworn I’d rung you to say I’d be dropping it off.”

  “No, you didn’t, Felicity.” You never call before you come over, I felt like adding but didn’t. Felicity had a habit of turning up unannounced at the most inconvenient time to work on the garden. You’d be lying there, seminaked, stretched out on the lawn sunbathing and Felicity would appear with a team of men who would start digging all around you. “What time did you get here the first time, when you saw Angel? Did she see you?”

  “You know, I don’t think she did. She had the blinds down. She had a visitor, a man. They left together, that’s when I saw her and I was out in the street by then. It was about four-thirty, quarter to five maybe.”

  Mrs. O’Malley hadn’t mentioned a man with Angel, had she? I couldn’t remember what Max Austin had said.

  We went indoors and I left my mother standing in the rapidly disintegrating kitchen to go upstairs to my office and think about some work. I had to begin the book and all the activity in the house had delayed me. Sometimes I rolled out of bed and went straight to my desk to begin writing before the precious early morning fresh-from-a-good-night’s-sleep inspiration evaporated. I would have to start locking the door to the little room off my bedroom that I had designated as my new office. As soon as Tommy ran out of places to dump things on the floor in my bedroom he wouldn’t think twice about encroaching on the space where I worked. I had visions of trying to write with my feet sinking into a pile of T-shirts encrusted with dried sweat lying where he’d dumped them when he came in from his morning run.

  I called Max Austin to tell him about Felicity but he was out and so was Mary Mehta. Well, they didn’t make it easy for me to give them vital information either, did they? I transcribed the tapes Selma had given me so far and instead of feeling virtuous, I began to see myself as totally redundant. Selma didn’t need a ghost. She was delivering her message in a clear, concise voice that I really didn’t think I could improve on. If anything, my services might be required to assemble the material in a slightly more cohesive order once I had typed it up but apart from that I didn’t see why she needed me.

  It took me only a minute to realize I was lying to myself. I knew exactly why she wanted me. She had taken me into her confidence and she needed me as a buffer between herself and Buzz. There was no escape for me. I couldn’t let her down. But what would she do if she knew that the person in whom she had chosen to place her trust, was someone who had already betrayed her?

  I fretted all afternoon until I opened the door to Max Austin at around six o’clock. I was staggered. Since I’d seen him that morning he’d had what looked like a very expensive haircut. Not that I’m an expert on men’s haircuts. It’s not something Tommy goes in for very often. Then, when I took his overcoat in the hall, I noticed that he had changed his clothes. He was dressed casually but looking really quite spruced up in a pair of charcoal trousers and a black polo neck sweater. I had a fleeting moment of anger. Here I was doing his washing because I thought he didn’t have enough time off from work to take care of it and all the time he’d been off getting himself fancy haircuts and decking himself out in some nice threads. But then it occurred to me that maybe he had a date. Maybe he was on his way to pick up someone whose appearance in his life might mark the end of his lonely days as a widower. My anger was instantly dissipated at the thought of the tentative relationship that would be unfolding over the next few weeks. But surely he wasn’t going to turn up for a date with his washing in tow. That wouldn’t be at all romantic.

  He was staring at me and I don’t blame him. God knows how long I’d been standing there fantasizing about his private life. I have to confess I’m a sucker for widowers, although the ones I usually feel sorry for are shrunken old men with white hair who shuffle down the road in a state of bewilderment that their beloved wife of fifty years has departed before them.

  “It’s still in the dryer,” I said over my shoulder as I went up the stairs, “so I wonder if you wouldn’t mind coming up to my office for a few minutes. It’s rapidly becoming the only room in the house that’s safe to enter. I’ve got something to tell you.” I paused suddenly and turned around to confront him on the stairs behind me. It was rather odd looking down on him. He had a tiny bald patch on the very top of his head. “I forgot to offer you a drink. What would you like? Or are you on duty?”

  He smiled at this. “No, I’m not—eh—on duty.” He sounded as if it wouldn’t make much difference if he was. “I’m picking up my washing and a Scotch and water—right up to the top—while I wait for your tumble dryer to run its course would be excellent. Thanks.

  “You know,” he said and his mournful face became quite animated, “we had a case last year where we found a woman’s body parts in a tumble dryer. We were onto this bloke and we went round to nab him. We disturbed him in the middle of cutting her up. He flung everything into the dryer along with his washing and switched it on. Then he made a run for it. You’d think he’d have figured it out that the clothes would all turn red. It was a Miele. Sadie always said they were the best.”

  I couldn’t move. Did he have any idea of the effect this grisly piece of information would have on me? I knew for a fact that this image of bloody body parts going around and around would pop into my head the minute I closed my eyes to go to sleep for the next six weeks. Was he going to go on like this? Was this the sort of thing you should expect from a detective off duty? Because if so he could leave right now.

  He saw my face and was mortified.

  “I’m sorry. You look quite ill. Are you all right? Sadie always liked hearing the gory bits but I know it can give some people a nasty turn.”

  “You have to deal with this sort of thing every day,” I said, pouring myself an even larger Scotch than the one I handed to him. And I never drank whiskey! “I don’t know how you can stand it. What keeps you going?”

  He looked at me in surprise. “It motivates me, quite frankly. The worse the condition of the body the more I want to go out and get the bastard who did the damage. My job is to catch the people who do these things so they can be punished and I want to see them punished. They’re scum.”

  “All of them?” He sounded so vehement I was a little alarmed.

  “Most. It’s pretty grim out there but I’ve never regretted becoming a detective. Never!” he added, as if he thought I might contradict him. “I was the first one in my family to go to university and everyone thought I was mad but it helped when I entered the police force. I was on the fast track because of it, made detective ahead of my peers and they didn’t like that one bit but it was worth it. Each time I put a villain away I’m a very happy man. Very happy.” He jumped the last two steps on the stairs as if for emphasis. “So what is it you want to tell me?”

  We’d reached the landing and I saw him glance into my bedroom and take in all Tommy’s clutter all over the floor. Once he was in my office he started to go around the room looking at all the photographs, peering at the books on my shelves. I rem
oved a pile of manuscript pages from a chair and invited him to sit down. Now he was reading all my notes to myself pinned up on a slab of dark brown cork above my desk, anything from Print out Chapter 9 with latest revisions to Buy Tampax or Tell Tommy Shagger called.

  “What’s she doing up there? You know her?” He was looking at an old picture of Cath.

  “She’s an old friend. And Sergeant Cross’s girlfriend. Have you met her?”

  “Briefly. She’s come to pick up Richie from work on the odd occasion.”

  I realized I was longing to know what he thought of her and I also realized he wasn’t going to tell me.

  “Is it serious?” I asked him.

  He shrugged. “Put it this way. If she wants to be Mrs. Cross, she’s going to have to be the one to do something about it. They moved in together but I have a feeling that was all her doing. Richie hasn’t a clue about women.”

  And you do? I felt like saying. I was beginning to wonder if I was wrong about him. I had pegged him for a sad creature mourning his dead wife, desperately in need of someone to look after him but maybe it wasn’t as simple as that. Maybe he wasn’t as helpless as I thought. He was probably more than capable of taking care of himself, probably even preferred to do so. It had probably suited him to have me do his laundry for some reason because one thing I was sure of: Max Austin didn’t do anything he didn’t want to.

  He leaned forward and tapped the photo of Cath. “Although maybe Richie’s better off without her,” he muttered.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “I thought you said she was an old friend,” he said without elaborating further.

  “Do I call you Inspector Austin or Max?” I asked him.

  “Well, what do you want me to call you?” he countered.

  “I’m Lee so I guess you can be Max.”

  “It’s my name. So what have you got for me?”

  “I’ve found the woman your witness saw.”

  “Oh yes?” To my intense irritation, he sounded skeptical.

  “The woman who takes care of my mother’s garden, Felicity. She was there around four-thirty on New Year’s Eve. The summerhouse was okay. She saw Angel there and then she saw her leave.” I paused for effect. “With a man.”

  “Yes, we know,” he said and I nearly fell off my chair.

  “You know? You’ve spoken to Felicity?”

  “Of course. You told us about her, remember? Her number was in your address book. And we know Angel left with a man.”

  “Mrs. O’Malley told you?”

  “She didn’t actually. She omitted that little detail but once we went back and told her, she amended her statement pretty quickly. Amazing how you can jog people’s memories just like that.”

  I was feeling rather deflated. I had so wanted to impress him with my discovery of Felicity.

  “Well, at least you can eliminate one of the people your witnesses saw. Anyway Felicity couldn’t possibly be a suspect. She wouldn’t murder anyone in a million years.”

  “She wasn’t the woman,” he said quietly.

  “What?” I wasn’t sure I had heard him correctly. Of course Felicity was the woman.

  “Our witness took one look at her and said they’d never seen her before.”

  Suddenly I realized what a nightmare his job must be. Half the time witnesses were unreliable and just when you thought you had found the person they saw, there was nothing to stop them saying Oh no, you’ve got it wrong.

  “I suppose you also know that Buzz came round to see me last night?”

  He nodded.

  “Why is he free?” I asked, a note of desperation creeping into my voice.

  “We’ve got no reason to hold him,” said Max Austin.

  “But you have, you have,” I cried. “He beats his wife and he beat up Astrid McKenzie and you found his prints on the can of kerosene right here in my potting shed. Why haven’t you arrested him?”

  “We know why he lied about going to your house. Same reason you did. He wants to keep quiet about his adultery. And we know why he was in your back garden. But we’ve let him go.”

  “Why?” I could hardly believe it.

  “Because he’s not our man. He’s got a cast-iron alibi. He took a can of kerosene round on New Year’s Eve and that’s why his prints are all over them, but he was seen leaving well before the fire started and someone was with him right through until the next morning.”

  I didn’t like the sound of this. I remembered Bianca’s complaint: Young lady make mess.

  “So he didn’t set the fire but he had something to do with it.”

  “Not necessarily. We didn’t find any evidence of his having been at Astrid McKenzie’s place.”

  “What about the other prints you found on the can of kerosene? And the footprints you think belonged to a child?”

  He nodded.

  “Well, whose do you think they are?”

  “We don’t know. We’ve talked to Kevin O’Malley and we’ve ruled him out. He wasn’t in your garden when the fire was started. He was upstairs chatting to his friends on-line and we’ve got the times on the e-mails to prove it.”

  “You know those prints might have been Angel’s.”

  Now he looked interested. “Why do you say that?”

  “Well, you say they’re small prints and Angel is tiny. Maybe she kept a can of kerosene in the potting shed for some reason.”

  “You’re saying Angel O’Leary set fire to the summerhouse where she was living? Tell me, I’d really like to know, what do you think her motive was?” He was humoring me now, plainly amused by my attempt to play sleuth.

  “Oh, no, of course I don’t think that. I don’t know what I’m saying. To think that Angel would start the fire would be crazy but then why would a child do something like that?”

  “There are a lot of amateur detectives these days but I’ll be honest with you, Lee, I didn’t imagine you were going to turn out to be one of them.”

  “I just so hoped you had enough to put Buzz away. Do you understand the mess I’ve got myself into?” There was no stopping me now. I’d yearned to be able to talk to someone about Buzz, not that I’d imagined in a million years that that someone would be Max Austin. “I’ve been a complete fool. It was totally unlike me to let him seduce me, you have to believe me. It came out of the blue, I was going for a job interview, I didn’t expect to meet someone and be violently attracted to them. I didn’t know he was Selma’s husband.”

  He’d got up and was standing looking out the window. I couldn’t see his face, couldn’t tell if he was even remotely interested in what I was telling him.

  “He beats Selma up too,” I went on. “He knocks her about. That’s what the book’s going to be about. It’s not her autobiography, she wants to do a book for victims of domestic violence like her. She wants to share her experience with them, use her celebrity to offer her support. But she told me that after all he’s done to her, she still loves him and I believe her. There’s something about him—I’ve been trying to work out what it is that made him so appealing. What do you suppose happened to him to make him the way he is?”

  Suddenly Max Austin turned on me.

  “Forgive me but you’re talking complete crap,” he exploded. “You’re asking for my understanding about some torrid little affair you’ve been having. You’re winding up to spout some bleeding heart liberal bullshit about how poor Buzz Kempinski was probably abused as a kid so that lets him off the hook for what he’s doing now. Have you any idea how lucky you are?”

  “Lucky?” I didn’t get it.

  “Yes, lucky. You’ve got away from this guy. You’re not hooked into him like Selma Walker is, or Astrid McKenzie was, or countless others no doubt. When we were called round to Astrid McKenzie’s place a few years ago we found her beaten almost to a pulp. The skin on her cheek was broken and the mess below her eye was like a blood orange, like overripe fruit. Pulp. And the word is she’d seen him again recently and lo and behold she’s in
the market the next day with a black eye. Seems like she wasn’t one to learn her lesson the first time.”

  “My agent told me that she—”

  “Yeah, yeah. We talked to her,” he said and I was momentarily unnerved. I should have wised up by now to the fact that he must have talked to everyone surrounding the case. I began to wonder just how much he knew about my life. I kept to myself and led such a hermit’s existence, I wasn’t used to being under the microscope and I wasn’t at all sure I liked it.

  “You’re trying to sell me on the notion that he’s not all bad,” Max continued. “Well I don’t buy it even if it’s free. Buzz Kempinski’s a menace and nothing would make me happier than to pin this fire on him so I could nail him once and for all. But I can’t. I bloody can’t.”

  He sat down again and leaned forward to tap my knee.

  “I’m more frustrated about the fact that I can’t arrest Buzz Kempinski than I have been about anything in years. And as for suggesting that Angel O’Leary might be implicated in some way—that’s the biggest irony of all.”

  “Why’s that?” I was scared of him now. He was right to make me feel stupid but did he have to crush me so completely?

  “You haven’t asked me who his alibi was.”

  “Oh no!”

  “Oh yes. They had a date for New Year’s Eve. She said she was freezing cold in the summerhouse and she called him to ask him to bring her some kerosene for the heater. She’d run out. He turns up, they fill the heater, leave the can in the potting shed. Then they go off to celebrate New Year’s Eve together—all night. It fits with the times we’ve got people saying they saw them plus we’ve got them on the closed-circuit TV coming into Ladbroke Grove from Blenheim Crescent a good half hour before Kevin O’Malley saw Fred arrive. Angel O’Leary was his alibi, all right. They’d been at it like rabbits all through Christmas.”

  As if to emphasize the horrible truth of what he was saying, I felt the dryer’s final shudder vibrating through the house. Then came the sound of the high-pitched penetrating signal that meant the cycle had come to an end. It was broken and once it started, it wouldn’t stop until I went downstairs and turned it off.