A Ghost at the Door

by Michael Dobbs

  For a moment Harry almost panicked – he couldn’t find the photograph; he scrabbled around and found it lurking even further down the side of the cushion.

  The photograph was unloved, its colours a little faded, and it had been bent in two in order to get it into the envelope. It was taken from the dockside, looking up at a large, white-hulled luxury yacht of around forty metres, Harry reckoned, whose sleek lines disappeared into the distance. Standing in front of his yacht was the captain, in uniform with bare forearms and dark glasses. Beside him, on the other side of the crease, dressed in a white blouse and bright cotton floral print, was a woman. She was thin-faced, greying, a little scrawny and defiantly old-fashioned to Harry’s eye, distinctly pale in comparison with the captain, squinting awkwardly in the fierce light. Not the type to be slipping and sliding on his father’s sun deck. He flipped the photograph and found scratchy writing on the back: ‘SS Adriana’. Beneath that, a name: ‘Capt. Kouropoulos’. And still another: ‘Sue Ranelagh’. At his side Jemma was erupting with excitement and corporate highlights, but he was no longer listening.

  They sat side by side on the sofa, bent over their respective laptops.

  ‘Their website’s full of smiles and expensive orthodontics,’ Jemma said, with a hint of suspicion. ‘Its parent company’s based in Andorra.’

  ‘Tax haven.’

  ‘Not too much about it. No negative stuff. You’re right, it’s deep into military bits. Fancy end. Software rather than bayonets.’ She turned, her nose wrinkled in concern. ‘Is that a problem for us, darling?’

  Without looking up he arched an eyebrow. His career in the British Army had included the Paras, the Pathfinders, the 22 Special Air Service Regiment and mortal combat on four different continents. Occasional visits to an office in Mayfair was unlikely to cause him sleepless nights.

  ‘There are bits here about new ventures into what they call cleantech industries,’ she added, more enthusiastically.

  ‘Sounds almost charitable.’

  ‘Er . . .’ – she hammered away at the keyboard – ‘one of the big accountancy firms does their audits. That’s important, too, isn’t it?’

  ‘Enron thought so.’

  ‘Harry, what’s your problem?’ she snapped, slamming down the lid of her laptop. ‘They offer you a way out of jail and you don’t seem to give a damn!’

  ‘This is the problem,’ he said, holding up the creased photograph. ‘Sue Ranelagh. She was on the boat when my father died. But who the hell is she?’

  ‘You’ve Googled?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I suppose there are hundreds on the Internet.’

  ‘Many thousands.’

  ‘So we know nothing about her.’

  ‘Well, we do. This photo was taken in 2001, so she’s – what – in her sixties by now?’

  ‘If she’s still alive.’

  ‘We know she’s rather conservative in her dress sense and probably her outlook. North European, at a guess. And probably had money.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘She wasn’t on board because she was all teeth and tits. She was a passenger, a guest. One who could mix with the likes of oligarchs and other wealthy arseholes. Like my father.’

  ‘Still doesn’t help us very much.’

  ‘Oh, but I think it does. I couldn’t wade through the tide of Sue Ranelaghs that the computer threw up, or even those that call themselves Susan. But I thought: money, traditional, bit posh. So for the hell of it I tried the name Susannah.’ He swivelled the laptop so it was facing her. ‘And there she is.’

  Jemma examined the page on the screen. Just one entry, but enough. A photograph of a Miss Susannah Ranelagh, President and Patron of the Bermuda Arts and Cultural Foundation, pictured making an award to three black music students. A couple of years old. A short caption, no supporting text.

  ‘But you can’t be—’ She was about to suggest he couldn’t be certain, until he expanded the photograph. The same face, somewhat greyer hair, and identical dress sense.

  ‘I need to go and see Miss Ranelagh,’ he said in a voice that seemed strange, as though it had been sieved through filters somewhere inside.

  ‘No rush,’ she said, opening up her laptop once more.

  ‘I think there is.’

  ‘You’ve waited this long, what difference—’

  ‘As you said, she’s old.’

  ‘But you can’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘You’ve got this to deal with.’ She waved the letter.

  ‘It can wait.’

  ‘No, he explicitly says this is a matter of urgency.’

  ‘If he wants me that much, he’ll wait. A few days.’

  ‘But bloody Bermuda? You can’t afford it. Why not call her?’

  ‘Because I need to see her. She was one of the last people to see my father alive.’

  ‘Harry!’ Jemma pounded the cushions in frustration. ‘This . . .’ She grabbed the letter once more, threw it angrily into his lap. It was growing into an argument, a big one, their first. ‘Accept this and many more could follow. You become flavour of the month once again – Harry Jones, the man everyone admires and wants a piece of. Oh, perhaps you don’t want to become a corporate creature, not for ever, but this is a chance for you to get back on your feet. For us to move forward, Harry. I love you, I’ve hated watching you suffer. This could be our future. We don’t need the past.’

  ‘That’s not what you said before.’

  ‘Please?’

  She was pleading, but he wouldn’t respond. He stared, not just defiantly but in raw and rough-edged anger; it was a passion that bubbled up from somewhere so deep within and so up close that it frightened her. Suddenly she was looking at a part of him she scarcely knew. This was a man who couldn’t be stopped, not just because he was simply determined but because the stupid bastard didn’t know when to stop. That could be dangerous. And it terrified her.

  Robert Tallon’s golfing partner was lining up his second putt on the decisive seventeenth when the lawyer’s mobile began to vibrate. He glanced at the caller’s number. ‘Sorry, it’s an emergency,’ he declared.

  ‘Christ, Robert, it had better be,’ his playing partner growled, waving his hand at the six and a half feet of manicured lawn that lay between him and bragging rights in the bar.

  Tallon wandered down from the tee to the shelter of a nearby rhododendron shrub, trying to find a little privacy and protection from the wind that had shanked his last drive thirty yards into the sand trap. ‘Couldn’t it wait?’ he said, instinctively covering the mouthpiece with his free hand.

  ‘I’ve just spoken to Jones,’ the caller said.

  ‘Ah, good.’

  ‘Nothing good about it. He’s not biting.’

  ‘But he must!’

  ‘Says he’s got too much on his plate at the moment. Wondered if we could give him more time.’

  ‘You told him that wasn’t possible, of course?’

  ‘Of course. I was very clear.’

  ‘And you also made it clear that you were prepared to be generous?’

  ‘Exceptionally.’

  ‘Damn it! He can’t have more bloody time.’ Tallon glanced over his shoulder to where his partner was standing, leaning impatiently on his putter. ‘So go back and offer him more money. Add something to the benefit package, more share options or something. I feel sure my client and your key investor will approve.’

  ‘And, since it’s his money, I shall do my best. I’ll let you know. But I’d better get my skates on.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He said he had a plane to catch.’

  The phone went dead, leaving Tallon with the feeling that all was not well in his world. But he was a lawyer, an Edinburgh soul in exile who permitted his emotions to range freely only on rare occasions, such as the run-up to the sale of Victorian watercolours at Christie’s or those wind-swept afternoons spent in his debenture seat at Hampden Park. Now he watched impassive
ly as his partner sank the winning putt and gave a little jig of jubilation.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ‘Don’t come looking for me, Harry. Not behind doors that I’ve closed.’

  He remembered his father’s words, but how could he forget? Shortly after his mother had died, when Harry was around fourteen, he’d spent a few days with his father in the apartment he was renting on one of the elegant tree-encrusted squares of Bloomsbury. Harry had taken himself off to the British Museum for a new exhibition but it had failed to capture his imagination and he’d returned much earlier than expected to his father’s place. He knew his father was at home because the latch hadn’t been double-locked. He’d marched naïvely, innocently, through the living room and then through the bedroom door to discover his father. He was naked. So was the woman beneath him. ‘Your turn soon, eh, Harry, old boy?’ his father had muttered, but the embarrassment was as impossible to hide as his father’s wrinkled arse. The woman had been bundled rapidly away and, as the front door closed behind her, the light-heartedness of his father had turned to stone. The words were thrust at him like a steaming poker. ‘Don’t come looking for me, Harry. Not behind doors that I’ve closed.’

  Then his father had struck him, across his face. There had been clips and taps before, even a gentle backhander or two, but this had been the first serious assault. One man marking out his ground against another. Even at fourteen Harry had wanted to hit back and had no thought of running, but instead he simply stood there and took it. And the second blow. He wouldn’t hit his father. But that was when the blame began in earnest. He saw his father in a bleaker, more desolate light, no longer knowing him, and Harry began taking sides in his parents’ busted marriage. The awe and loyalty of childhood began to sink almost without trace beneath the doubts that come with adolescence and endure far longer than any bruise.

  His broken memories were disturbed as the pilot gave his aircraft the lightest touch of thrust and the Boeing 777 banked over the ocean for its final approach to L. F. Wade International airport. This was one of the finest approach runs anywhere in the world, into the islands of Bermuda that hung like a string of pearls in the empty Atlantic, and it was early evening, the sky shaded with gentle hues as the aircraft passed above St George’s. It would be a couple of hours yet before the lights of the old township were switched on and began to light up its narrow and picturesque streets. Beneath him Harry could see the microscopic outlines of people strolling about their business. This was subtropical paradise; nothing happened in a hurry.

  The island was a remnant of empire – what was in the official script described as a British Overseas Territory. It still doffed its banana leaf to the Queen but in almost all other respects it went its own way with its own government, its own laws and, most importantly for the tribe of wealthy expats who claimed residence there, its own tax regime. Despite the ever-present threats of hurricane and social incest, so many flocked to its shores that it was rumoured to have the highest per capita wealth in the world, but no one knew for certain. And that was the magic of the place. No one knew, not for certain.

  Harry had nothing but hand luggage, an old leather shoulder bag he’d picked up in Colombia when his luggage had been stolen, and he was soon at the front of the line for passport control. ‘Business or pleasure, Mr . . . Jones,’ the black official in a crisp blue shirt asked, glancing at the proffered passport.

  ‘Entirely personal pleasure,’ Harry replied, and was waved through.

  The airport was barely six tree-lined miles from the capital, Hamilton; Harry took a bus. He jumped out at Front Street by the harbour, not knowing for sure where he was headed, but it didn’t prove to be a major inconvenience. Hamilton was small, a population of barely two thousand; nothing was more than a cat’s cry away. He tarried only to fill his lungs with air that had last touched land somewhere off the Gulf of Mexico, before asking a passer-by for directions, then walking as he’d been directed through the colonial backstreets with their verandahs and pastel-painted galleries and taverns, weaving through slow-moving traffic, climbing steps, until he had found the B&B he’d booked on the Internet. By the time he’d registered, been shown his room and thrown his shoulder bag on the bed, he was ready for a drink.

  It was still early evening but he was five hours ahead; he retraced his footsteps and found himself in the bar of the Pickled Onion on Fore Street. He had beaten even the early crowd and sat at the long frost-coloured bar. He ordered a local beer, then almost gagged on its lack of conviction but stuck with it as he ran through his options. He’d rushed, hadn’t made much of a plan, which was unlike him, but then he didn’t normally have heated rows that included a cracked mug of coffee and tears with Jemma. She’d thought Bermuda was a bad idea, had got passionate about it, couldn’t go with him, not in the middle of the school term, said that anyway he couldn’t afford it and that maybe, just maybe, he had other priorities. Like? he’d asked, very stupidly. Making a few plans, she’d suggested, very tartly. And maybe even finding her an engagement ring, although she’d been too proud to make any direct reference to that. It hadn’t been a great farewell. So Harry sat, swallowed the last of the insipid beer and ordered a bourbon on the rocks; in a hot climate he preferred it to malt whisky.

  He had come in search of one woman, knew nothing except for her name. Jemma had reckoned the whole idea was like looking for nuts in a nunnery – that was when she’d smacked the mug of coffee down so hard she’d been left holding nothing but the handle – but to Harry it seemed a reasonable bet. The island contained barely sixty thousand people. Only a third of them were white and many fewer would be female and elderly. And probably only one would be named Susannah Ranelagh. An hour in the National Library should be enough; he’d passed its canopy-covered door on the stroll to the bar and it would be open at ten in the morning. Anyway, as he’d reminded Jemma, nuts stood out in a nunnery. That was when the tears had started.

  He didn’t need to wait for the National Library to open. ‘Miss Ranelagh?’ the bartender said as he splashed the dark spirit over a mountain of ice. He was young, mixed-race, subtle earring, late twenties, full of cheer and named Vince. ‘Sure I know her. Everybody knows everybody here – and everything,’ he chuckled. ‘That’s why it’s so quiet. You wanna misbehave you spend the weekend in New York and hope you’re not gonna meet your neighbour at the check-in.’ Vince laughed again. ‘But somehow I don’t think you’ll be finding Miss Ranelagh playing away. No, sir, not she.’

  ‘Tell me about her.’

  A thread of suspicion rippled though the bartender’s eyes.

  ‘Don’t worry. She’s an old friend of my father but I’ve never met her. Thought I might go and say hello.’

  Vince began polishing a glass as he considered. Harry had paid for the bourbon with a twenty and left the change on the counter. Vince cast the towel aside and leaned over the bar. ‘It’s not like I get invited to dinner, you understand. She’s one of the Stay-Ons. Most of them only come to visit for a while, count their money and make sure it’s hidden somewhere safe, but she seems to genuinely like it here. Does a lot. Arts and stuff. A patron of the governor’s favourite charity.’

  Harry finished his drink and ordered another. He paid for it with a fresh twenty, once again leaving the change on the bar, smiling at the young man. ‘This is a spur-of-the-moment thing for me, Vince. I’m not even entirely sure where she lives.’

  Vince polished the bar with a fresh towel, carefully, not rushing, sweeping up the change as he did so. ‘Oh, Miss Ranelagh, she lives out in Flatt’s on Harrington Sound. Everyone knows that, don’t they, now?’

  ‘She ever been married that you know of?’

  Vince scrunched up his face. ‘Nah. Not that I know. No way, not her. She’s not a – you know, what d’you call them? – a woman’s woman. That’s not what I mean. She just seems a little old-fashioned. Catholic. From Ireland, I guess.’

  ‘I think she may have been a business partner of my father’s.’


  ‘What does he say?’

  ‘Not much. He’s dead.’

  Vince spent a moment digesting the information. It seemed clear that Harry wouldn’t be making just a social call. ‘Not really sure what business she’s into,’ he said, ‘but no one’s ever really sure what other people are into here, unless you’re a bartender. And even I have a few other irons in the fire.’ He stared hard at Harry, drew closer. ‘How long you staying, mister? You’re on your own, right? You interested in a little action, maybe?’

  ‘What sort of action?’

  ‘Whatever. Golf, if that’s your thing. Sailing. Fishing.’ A gentle pause, a raised eyebrow. ‘A little local culture, maybe.’

  Harry smiled but shook his head. ‘No, thanks, Vince. I’ve got a brand-new fiancée and she’s all tucked up at home waiting for me.’

  Except Harry was entirely wrong. She wasn’t.

  Jemma wasn’t the sort to sit idle at home. In any case, she was deeply hacked off with Harry, but that wasn’t the end of the story: her exasperation masked an even deeper concern. She could put up with being left behind on his trip to Bermuda, and there was no way she could wangle the time away from teaching, but in his determination to get to the truth about his father’s death she had also seen and sensed a side of Harry that she didn’t recognize and didn’t much care for. He’d convinced himself there was some funny business about it – he said his burning ear told him so – and he was deaf to every word of caution and reason she threw at him. It was beginning to seem like an obsession. She’d glimpsed that in him before, of course, but had never had to confront it. The cold deliberation, the lack of flexibility, a machine that was programmed for a single purpose and seemed to have no off switch. He was going to find Susannah Ranelagh and that was it. Even as she fretted she realized it was partly her own fault – she was the one who’d pushed him off on his search for his father in the first place, so she wouldn’t wail and whine. She’d started the whole affair; she decided she might as well help finish it. Get the old Harry back. So, even as he was being pimped by the bartender she was sitting on their sofa, wearing his slippers and one of his old shirts, finding comfort in his smell and going through the file about his father.