How to Seduce a Ghost

by Hope McIntyre

  Cath shook her head. “I was with Lee that evening. I hadn’t seen him all day. We spoke on the phone and he said he’d been to somewhere like Peckham but he didn’t say why. I knew he was going to check you out, Max, see if you were up for a beer or something. The next thing I heard was you calling me to say he was in hospital.”

  “Look,” said Max, “we’re going to get Buzz. I’ll put a watch on the house so if he comes anywhere near Selma, we’ll know. Tell her not to worry. I’m going to send someone round to take some pictures of her all beaten up. Cath, I’ll see you at the hospital later.”

  “You haven’t a clue, have you?” said Cath when he’d gone. She was grinning at me like a Cheshire cat and while it felt good to see her smile again, I was a little uncomfortable.

  “About what?”

  “He fancies you.”

  “Who does?”

  “Max. He fancies you. It’s clear as day.”

  “He does not.”

  “He never stopped looking at you even when he was speaking to me. He was all of a twitter. I’ve never seen him like that. Richie mentioned a while back that he’d been talking about you but I didn’t catch on. I thought he meant talking about your case, not about you. Why did he have to come round to tell you Buzz’d scarpered? He could have just phoned you.”

  “I expect he wanted to see you, not me. Anyway he was here earlier this morning. He was only going round the corner to Buzz’s. It made sense for him just to pop back.”

  “What do you mean he was just here?”

  “He was on the doorstep first thing and so I told him about Selma.”

  “What about Selma?”

  When I told her she came over and hugged me. “What is it with you, girl? You seem to be running a refuge for women in trouble. Her, me, your mum. Weird occupation for someone who values her solitude as much as you do.”

  But I was still thinking about Max. “I suppose he has taken to turning up quite a bit lately. He was here to pick up his laundry”—at which Cath rolled her eyes—“then he turned up with you the night Richie was attacked, then he was back yesterday—asking how you were—and again this morning. But he’s got a perfectly good reason. You heard him this morning, he’s keeping me posted about his investigation into my fire. I asked him to.”

  “And you believe that? Any reason why he can’t just pick up his mobile and give you a quick bell? You are talking about a seriously busy man and anyway it’s the Family Liaison Officer’s job—what’s her name? Mary someone—to keep you in the loop. He doesn’t have time to go making house calls every five minutes. Have you any idea of the hard time he’d give Richie, if Richie took to popping by to see some woman?”

  “I’m not some woman,” I protested.

  “My point exactly,” said Cath. “How long did he stay after your mother took me upstairs that night?”

  “Quite a long time,” I admitted. “He was still here when Tommy came home drunk and we had that row.”

  “And he heard it?” Cath leaned forward.

  “You know, I’m not sure. I thought he left but maybe he was on the stairs listening.”

  “Well, there you are. He thinks you’ve broken up with Tommy and he’s going to try his luck.”

  “But a couple of times he’s been all dressed up in smart clothes, as if he’s about to go out on a date.”

  “What sort of clothes?”

  “Just—I don’t know—better clothes than that sad suit and tie he normally wears. Like he’d made a real effort to impress someone. I assumed he was going on to meet a woman.”

  “Did it ever occur to you that maybe he was trying to impress you?”

  “Oh, stop it, Cath.” For some reason the idea bothered me. Had I made a fool of myself yet again? If what Cath said was true, no wonder Max was in such a state over Buzz. No, it was insane and I wouldn’t give it another thought.

  “I’ll leave you to fret about it all day,” said Cath knowingly. “Don’t look like that, Lee. It’s not the end of the world. You’ve probably brought a little sunshine into his life, think of it that way. He could use some, that’s for sure.”

  “Call me from the hospital the minute there’s any change,” I told her and gave her a parting hug.

  When I went upstairs to check on her, Selma suggested we use the time together to work on the book. She wanted to listen to the tapes together and take a break now and then to discuss how the material might be incorporated into the book. It wasn’t how I usually worked but I appreciated the gesture of cooperation. I wanted to do as much for her as I possibly could. Sleeping with Buzz was probably the single most cheesy thing I had ever done. Although I prayed she would never learn about it, I planned to make it up to her by putting together the best book I had ever written.

  I went into the bathroom, retrieved the ghetto blaster where it was perched on a stool beside the bath and ejected the Waylon Jennings tape that accompanied Tommy’s sing-along in the tub most mornings. I picked up a plaid wool shirt off the floor and a stray navy sock and tossed them into the laundry basket. And then the phone rang.

  It was Max. I answered it by my bed and sat down rather suddenly, Cath’s words still fresh in my mind. Selma came to the doorway of the office. I felt stupid and jittery as if I were answering the phone to my very first date and it made me more than a little abrupt with him. He was calling to tell me he’d made the necessary checks and Selma Walker was telling the truth about being down in Devon over the Christmas holidays.

  “Well, of course she was,” I shouted suddenly, aware of Selma standing right in front of me. “I never doubted it for a second. Why would she lie to me?”

  “But you were the one who told me she was lying in the first place,” he pointed out, clearly shaken by my tone, “about going to New York to see her family, don’t you remember?”

  “Oh, probably,” I said.

  “Well, I just thought you’d like to know.” He sounded totally dejected. “I still don’t like the fact that she lied to you. I’ve only established she went to Devon over Christmas. Nobody has been able to confirm she was at the cottage on New Year’s Eve. It’s miles from anywhere apparently and no one had any reason to go near it. They were all too busy celebrating elsewhere. As I’ve said, I’m not happy with the idea of her as the prime suspect but as you yourself pointed out, she does have a motive. I mentioned Angel O’Leary and she said she didn’t know who I was talking about. Earlier she had referred to your ‘little blond lodger’ and when I pointed out to her that Angel O’Leary was this person, she pretended she didn’t know the lodger’s name. Perfectly possible, I suppose, but I had the distinct feeling she was lying, that she knew much more about Angel than she was letting on. She could have driven up from Devon for the day. And there’s another thing. When I spoke to her this morning, I noticed something. She has very small hands—”

  I hung up on him. I didn’t want to face what he was saying. Here I was, sheltering Selma from Buzz and instead of going after him, Max was trying to make it sound as if she were the criminal. Worse than that, he was holding me responsible for putting the idea into his head.

  I stared at Selma’s battered face and shuddered. Had Buzz told her about Angel? Had he taunted her, provoked her in some way that had driven her to extreme lengths?

  And Max was right. She did have very small hands. She was reaching out with one of them now, pointing to the phone.

  “Would it be okay if I called Bianca and told her where I was?” she said. “I always tell her where I am. She’s the only person who has always known what he does to me. She’d be worried sick if I didn’t let her know I was all right.”

  “Of course,” I said, “make whatever calls you want. Will she be at your house? You’re not going to call there, are you?”

  “She has a mobile and only I have the number. I gave it to her for just this kind of emergency.”

  I left her alone to call Bianca and went downstairs to make us some coffee. When I returned, she’d inserted the fir
st tape and was curled up on my bed.

  As we listened, I realized this tape would be very useful for the proposal and I scribbled a note to remind myself to tell her that. Selma outlined in a lucid and rational way exactly how she felt her book would help other battered women. She spoke about what she had described earlier—the danger of the contrition phase.

  Then, to back this up, in the second tape, she began to chronicle the beatings she had endured followed by the periods of calm when she had reversed her decisions to leave him. The saddest moments were when she talked about her abject surrender at the onset of each beating, how she knew that to fight back would only prolong the agony and might even prove fatal. The least resistance she put up, the sooner it would all be over and they could enter another sweet contrition phase. It was, she said, as if she were watching slow-motion action in a film. She would see the arm, or the weapon, raised above her and force herself to go numb while she waited for the contact, thinking that this was not really happening to her but to somebody else.

  I sat there mesmerized. Selma’s voice had filled the room and as she sat there listening to herself our eyes met from time to time and she smiled, or nodded to emphasize a point. And then, after what must have been close to two hours, when there was a slight pause on the tape—she was searching for a word or a phrase—in the silence that followed, through my open bedroom door, we heard Buzz’s voice clearly and distinctly in the hall below.

  “I’m so sorry to disturb you. Lee’s expecting me.”

  Selma opened her mouth and I thought she was going to scream. I mouthed No, no,no! at her and signaled to her to stay in the office. I closed the door without making a sound and crept to the top of the stairs to listen.

  “Is she really? I didn’t know. Do come in.” I heard my mother close the front door. She must have come downstairs while we were playing Selma’s tape. I should have anticipated this and warned her not to open the door. She didn’t know Selma was still here. More to the point, she probably had no idea who Buzz was. After all, she’d never seen him before.

  “We’re working together,” I heard Buzz say smoothly and quite truthfully.

  “I expect she’s upstairs,” said my mother. “Hold on, I’ll just get her for you. Who shall I say it is?”

  “Robert,” he said, giving his real name. And that was clever. If my mother knew him by name, she would only remember us talking about Buzz.

  “Lee,” she shouted up the stairs with no idea that I was crouching just out of sight. “Robert’s here.”

  I didn’t say a word, hoped she’d assume I’d gone out and send him away.

  “Lee!” she shouted again. “Are you there? Can you come down please? I’ve got to leave, I’m having my hair done.”

  Oh Mum, please don’t go. Stay where you are. Send him away.

  “Don’t let me keep you,” I heard him say. “I can see myself up, I know where she works. I’ve been here before.”

  “Oh, have you?” My mother’s voice indicated she was wavering. “Well, if you wouldn’t mind. I really ought to be off. If she’s not there, just come down and let yourself out. When were you last here? You know she’s moved her office from the top floor to the door off the first landing?”

  “I didn’t actually,” he said. “Thanks. I’ll find her, don’t worry.”

  And then everything happened at once. My mother went out the front door and he came bounding up the stairs yelling, “Lee, where are you? Lee?” and came upon me before I could even get to my feet.

  “Eavesdropping? Bit beneath you, I would have thought. Here, let me give you a hand.”

  I shrank from him but he caught me by the wrist and hauled me to my feet. And didn’t let me go.

  “What’s with the spooky look? You’ve been really weird since you went away. Is it because of your fire?” he asked, taking my chin between his finger and thumb and giving it a tweak. “You didn’t think I’d forgotten about you, did you?”

  I imagined Selma listening to every word on the other side of the door. If he kept this up, my secret was out.

  He let me go abruptly and moved toward my bedroom door. I leapt in front of him.

  “Let’s go downstairs. I’ll make you a cup of coffee.”

  He stepped back and leaned against the wall, looking surprised.

  “We’ve got a few things to catch up on, you and me,” he said pleasantly and I shivered with fear. What was he playing at? “I’ve had a detective round to see me a few times, seems to think I had something to do with your fire. Now why would he have that idea?”

  I said nothing. I wanted to shout at him about Angel being his alibi but I was inhibited by Selma being within earshot.

  I couldn’t help observing that he looked beautiful. It had already struck me that he was the same type as Max Austin but I had to concede that while Max was intermittently attractive, Buzz was the real thing. He had an edge to him that Max only exhibited when he was moody or angry but with Buzz it was there all the time, simmering under the surface. It reminded you that he was dangerous and unpredictable and there was no way you could have anything else on your mind when you were with him.

  As I looked at him, I found myself thinking back to the conversation I had had with Max where I had raised the possibility that something in Buzz’s past had turned him into the sadistic monster I now knew him to be. I recalled the way Max had exploded in rage at my bleeding heart liberal bullshit as he’d called it and to my surprise I suddenly realized that, ironically, at the precise moment he said it, Max had appeared as alive and passionate and sexually charged as Buzz himself. Still, I wondered about Buzz’s past, his childhood—had he been abused himself?

  With Buzz standing there before me I was in shock and, it seemed, when I was in shock my mind turned to inconsequential thoughts. When I had learned that Astrid McKenzie had been burned to death in her house all I could think was that it was a shame she had just had it painted and why did women in high heels do silly things like walk down cobblestone streets? Now all I could do was think back to my first meeting with Buzz—to a time of innocence before I had done something so stupid as to have sex with him. He had played me that jazz CD he had just bought with the tenor sax that wailed first urgently and desperately—and then softly and irresistibly and I wanted to ask him to remind me who it had been.

  It was insane to be thinking something like that while Selma was in such danger and I was aware that it was some kind of defense mechanism kicking in to prevent me from showing how frightened I was.

  “Selma’s gone to Devon,” he said suddenly, conversationally and I looked at him and forced myself to appear calm. “Chap phoned this morning, one of the cast members of Fraternity. He’s got this house there and Selma’s going there, apparently, to work on your book. Did you know? No? Now why is that, I wonder? He gave me the number and the address, just in case I wanted to join her. I just phoned her, as a matter of fact, but she wasn’t there yet and her mobile’s switched off.”

  So now Selma couldn’t escape to Devon. Buzz came toward me again and I had a ghastly thought. Had he come around to see me, to resume our affair because he thought Selma was away? Maybe he had no idea she was even here.

  I had to get him away from my bedroom.

  “Come on, coffee,” I repeated. I moved toward the top of the stairs but he caught me by the wrist and drew me to him. Keep your head, I told myself. Don’t scream, don’t panic, don’t let him know anything’s wrong, just get him downstairs and out of the house.

  “Why have you been avoiding me? What’s she been telling you? You know, I’ve missed you so much.” He bent to kiss me and I turned my head so that his lips were buried in my hair. “You smell so wonderful, Lee. What’s it called, your scent?”

  “Jo Malone. Jasmine and honeysuckle,” I said.

  And suddenly he threw me against the banister and pinned me there.

  “Selma uses Shalimar by Guerlain. She smothers herself in it every morning so the smell is always lingering wherever
she is,” he hissed in my ear. “That’s how I know she’s here. I could smell it the minute I came upstairs. I thought it might be your scent, but it isn’t, is it, Lee? You’ve just set me straight there. This is like a children’s game—it’s stronger over here, am I getting warm?” Still holding on tightly to my wrist, he moved toward my bedroom door. “She’s in here, isn’t she?”

  “No,” I said as evenly as I could, “why would she be here? You said she was on her way to Devon.”

  “Well, maybe she’s been here? You’re lying, I can tell.”

  He gripped me and as my heart hammered away he held me to his chest, one hand pulling my head back by my hair so I had to look up into his face. And suddenly all trivial inconsequential thought evaded me and I found myself dwelling on something I’d heard on the radio recently: If you were murdered, it was highly likely to be by someone you knew.

  Murdered! My old nightmare. Over and over again I’d imagined how it would be. Strangled till my eyes popped out of their sockets or smothered with a pillow. Would I be stabbed in the chest and die from a massive hemorrhaging of the aorta? Would I be hit over the head with a blunt object? What constituted a blunt object? I pictured someone picking up my laptop and bashing it into my temple, someone into whose autobiography I had managed to inject his or her true vile personality without realizing what I was doing.

  And here was Buzz, someone I knew in the biblical sense even if I was a bit hazy about the rest of him. Was he going to kill me?

  “Who is this man with the house in Devon? Are he and Selma an item? What’s going on?”

  “Nothing,” I screamed because he was hurting me. “I don’t know anything.”

  “Let her go!” Selma opened the door and came at him like a snarling little terrier and he released me abruptly. “Lee,” she shouted. “Go and call the police.”

  But the sight of her did something to him and he began to lash out. I caught a glancing blow above my eye and felt blood trickling down my face where the skin was broken. Then he gripped Selma firmly by the elbow and began to propel her toward the stairs and when he put his hands on her and began to grip her hard it unleashed in me a rage I had never known before. I hurled myself at him and lashed out at him, pummeling him on the back, but it was no good.